Cinema Seminar:
Diabolique

Taught by Jennifer Fleeger, Ph.D.
Marie Frazee-Baldassarre Professor of Film Studies in the Department of English, Montclair State University

A sadistic man runs the French boarding school owned by his Spanish-teacher wife, whom he harasses and humiliates, like a tin-pot dictator. He also carries on an affair with another educator, whom he physically abuses. There should be no love lost between these two women, yet “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” ... or, at least, my co-conspirator.

Such is the premise of Diabolique (1955), which, surprisingly, is not a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, though it could have been. This isn’t the case just because it’s an unsettling thriller full of twists and turns, but because when Henri-Georges Clouzot bought the rights, he prevented Hitch from making it. Although Clouzot would eventually become a victim of changing tastes in France during its New Wave, his international reputation had grown to such a degree with the release of thrillers like Le Corbeau and The Wages of Fear that it was no surprise when Diabolique won several awards abroad.

In this seminar, we will discuss the critical reception of Clouzot’s work in the 1950s, pointing to the relationship between his thematic concerns and the images he shoots. We’ll situate those images in noir traditions, pointing to some of the film’s more compelling visual tropes, and paying particular attention to its excessive reliance on the close-up. We will consider Diabolique’s influence on other directors, including Hitchcock, and take a look at its source novel, whose overt queerness offers some clarity to the story’s more ambiguous relationships. And although we’ll address the rules for constructing a murder plot, analyzing how such stories work to deceive, we promise to follow the film’s marketing directive not to become “diabolical” by revealing the ending!