Original subtitles

Mystery, murder...

jealousy, vice...

The venomous power of Henri-Georges Clouzot's films still grips us today.

It was me I meant to kill!

Me, not him!

Mario!

Mario says, "Screw you!"

The Wages of Fear...

Quai des Orfevres...

Diabolique...

Clouzot was a master of suspense

who spun human neuroses into riveting entertainment.

A media darling, he reigned at film festivals worldwide.

Cannes, Berlin, and Venice

awarded him their highest honors.

Yet the filmmaker remains a mystery.

With his wife's death and his involvement in WWII...

a dark legend gathers around him.

He's been called diabolical, uncontrollable.

But was he really?

Who is the real Henri-Georges Clouzot?

THE CLOUZOT SCANDAL

Clouzot was born in Niort in 1907...

the eldest of three boys.

Even as a child, drama fascinated my brother.

He loved drama and fear.

He'd constantly scare me and make me cry.

CLOUZOT'S BROTHER

He'd think, "It's working. My audience is crying."

You said he wrote his first play at five years old?

That's right. He dictated a puppet show...

in which Punch laces his wife's bread with thumbtacks.

That's the sort of ideas he had at five.

Young Clouzot never witnessed a murder,

but he lived through his parents' divorce

after the bankruptcy of the family bookstore.

"You and Dad never really got along,"

he wrote to his mother later.

"If you'd lived together a few years before marrying,

I probably wouldn't exist -

a great loss for the dramatic arts."

Deeply affected by his father's decline

and the depression of his mother, who turns to him for affection,

Clouzot has no choice but to try to make it on his own.

Attracted to the bright lights of the capital,

he's quickly drawn to show business.

He makes a name for himself as a music-hall lyricist

and then a screenwriter.

BARGEKEEPER'S DAUGHTER A SMASH HIT

In writing he finally finds an outlet for his anxiety.

In his 20s he had such terrible nightmares

that he made himself stay awake.

FRIEND AND ASSOCIATE

He became a terrible insomniac. He couldn't sleep without pills.

So he went to see a psychoanalyst.

"Please help me. I can't take any more."

After five minutes, the psychoanalyst said...

"Continuing psychoanalysis is too risky for you.

If I rid you of all these things that haunt you,

I'll take away your imagination too."

So I thanked him and left.

- Are you ill? - They killed him! I'm sure of it!

Mr. Durand, the faceless killer. THE MURDERER LIVES AT NUMBER 21

Four murders in one month, all in the neighborhood.

So they say!

I think the journalists make it up to sell more papers.

His first feature, The Murderer Lives at Number 21,

already reveals a master of the genre...

with its striking images and snappy dialogue.

Clouzot's sure hand is impressive.

But this fear of the world comes from firsthand experience,

what he lived in the flesh.

An interesting period in Clouzot's life FILMMAKER

was when he was very ill

with pleurisy.

He was bedridden for four years - a long time for a young man.

He said it left "a taste of death" in his mouth.

Leysin Sanatorium.

October 17, 1934.

Clouzot is 26.

"I've been in the sanatorium since yesterday.

A flurry of invisible flakes fills my clear lung

and hinders my breathing."

I thought I was dying.

"How can I have peace of mind when I might not survive the week?

In a few hours I'll be 27,

though I can't even be sure I'll live that long.

My life isn't in immediate danger,

but there's never any guarantee.

The environment of uncertainty mirrors our deep, inner uncertainty."

THE LAST ONE OF THE SIX

You see that in his films.

His films are haunted...

by the fear of death,

by dark forces.

This period is also important,

because for those who've been sick

or who've been around the sick,

it's a terrifying experience

to realize your own body

is beyond your control.

I think an important theme in Clouzot's work

is the loss of bodily control.

In his staging and framing you sense a desire for control,

yet he often shows characters spiraling out of control.

His first film takes place

not in a sanatorium but in a boarding house

where a group of people live as shut-ins.

That's where the murderer lives, at number 21.

It's a basic crime thriller about finding a murderer.

But behind the comic characters and seemingly lighthearted tone...

Clouzot presents an outside world haunted by predators.

A sense of menace fills the air, because out there...

someone's killing people.

There are times when the pressure

of external events is such

that individual moral concerns

are forced to take a back seat

to those thrust upon us by the real world.

My first brush with the world of terror was the world itself.

It's certainly provided plenty recently!

The Murderer Lives at Number 21

was shot in 1942 during the German Occupation.

To the violence of war and economic and political subjugation,

Nazi Germany sought to add cultural domination.

When the Germans arrived in France,

they wanted to show the world they weren't barbarians. WRITER

To this end they got

the film industry running again

and reopened publishing houses and theaters.

The occupying forces created Continental Films

and named as its director a long-standing Nazi,

producer Alfred Greven.

Greven wooed film stars by claiming

he didn't want to make propaganda films.

But could he be believed?

I can't remember the exact date I was summoned,

but it was at the very end of 1940.

I was asked if I'd work on a script

for a detective film.

Clouzot had a budding reputation as a screenwriter,

and he was familiar with German cinema from having supervised

the French versions of German films shot in Berlin before the war.

Probably thinking Clouzot was ambitious enough

to be politically harmless, Greven hired him.

Greven then told me...

"Your script is much better than others I've read recently.

I'd like you to head up screenwriting at Continental Films."

At just 33...

under particularly dramatic circumstances,

Clouzot becomes one of the most powerful men in the French film industry.

Goebbels's orders are clear:

only lighthearted, superficial films.

But Clouzot is not the type to follow anyone's orders.

Now that he has power, he intends to use it.

Greven gave me the okay to make The Murderer Lives at Number 21,

and right after that, Le Corbeau.

Le Corbeau is the first film where I did what I wanted.

- I'm accused of being your mistress. - By whom?

I received a poison-pen letter.

- I got another poison-pen letter. - Again?

We have an epidemic on our hands, and it's spreading daily.

Louis Chavance's script, L'Oeil du serpent,

was obviously based on the Tulle affair.

You can't tell how far this filth will go.

The whole town may be infected.

A series of poison-pen letters plunges a small town

into a toxic climate of suspicion and rumors.

It's a portrait of small-town life that's also a thriller.

Let's be honest: It's a godsend for any director!

We're delighted to find stories like that.

It's based on a news item from the 1920s

that is completely apolitical.

The story he tells is apolitical.

Yet at the same time, it's extremely politically charged,

and even morally charged.

It's a bit blasphemous,

with the priests droning on and on,

and the Republican "religion" represented by the prefect,

making a ridiculous speech in which he explains, as usual,

that the guilty will be punished FILMMAKER

and law and righteousness will prevail.

Unhappy victim of a nameless murderer,

you shall be avenged!

- She's the Raven! - It's not true!

You put the letter in the wreath!

It's uncompromising.

And the fact it was made during the Occupation...

is quite significant.

Give us Marie Corbin first!

She came to work this morning. We dismissed her.

The story suited Clouzot's personality

and his penchant for taking risks.

We must give the impression we're taking action.

He has a slightly anarchistic, rebellious,

provocative, and sometimes cynical way

of lashing out at everything.

No one is spared.

Yet at the same time, he's working for Continental Films.

So I think it showed

a powerful independent streak in him.

Even working for the Germans, he manages to do what he wants.

I find that quite remarkable.

If you don't want to shock anyone, don't be a director.

It's what films do... FILMMAKER

with every image, every scene.

Cinema is always on the attack to some extent.

But great filmmakers are usually aggressive types.

They're on the attack.

In Clouzot's presence you sensed a certain danger.

He was a dangerous man.

The Occupation gave rise to heroes,

but it also revealed the darkest, most cowardly aspects of human nature.

In Marshal Petain's France,

people were rounded up, tortured, and executed,

often based solely on anonymous letters,

avidly encouraged by the occupying forces.

Your evidence is invaluable.

Write to: Jews Against France, 116, Avenue Champs-Elysees, Paris.

After Liberation...

they found thousands of denunciatory letters

yet to be processed by the Germans.

They'd been overwhelmed by the sheer volume

during four years of Occupation.

They later admitted that there were so many

that they couldn't process them all.

YOU ARE OUR LAST HOPE SOON THE JEWS WILL RULE US

Your denouncer might be a neighbor with a bone to pick,

or someone who has an eye on your shop.

But women would also often denounce their husbands

to get rid of them.

It couldn't be more sordid.

- Do we keep delivering them? - Unless we have orders not to.

We're accessories!

It was very well-received.

The press was almost unanimous.

It's the only time in my life I got good reviews.

Then, as you know, Mr. Greven fired me.

I was fired because the Kommandantur complained

that the film discouraged anonymous denunciations.

This was at the end of 1941,

when informers were really useful.

So I was abruptly fired.

Almost immediately, Radio London issued my death sentence.

But the tide abruptly turns. Everyone's against him.

He's attacked from every side.

In a way, it's reassuring to have everyone against you,

but it creates real problems for him too.

Vichy attacks him, as do Catholic circles,

who declare the film immoral.

Even the Resistance and the Communists attack him.

The famous article by Georges Sadoul

compares the film to Mein Kampf, which is a bit absurd.

And after Liberation, he's attacked yet again.

The film was banned after Liberation,

supposedly because it showed the Occupation and occupiers

in a favorable light.

I don't see how, but it was clearly political,

a way to sideline Clouzot for the horrendous offense

of collaborating with Continental Films.

HITLER'S EAGLE IN A RAVEN'S PLUMAGE

It's difficult today to distinguish

between the often clumsy sincerity of the attacks

and the guilt felt by many French people at the time

that made them conveniently forget their own cowardice,

imposed in part

by the difficult conditions during the Occupation.

They overcompensated by showing no mercy

to those charged as collaborators.

I have no right to judge those people.

They suffered terribly.

I don't think...

that courage and honesty are so widespread today

that we have the right to pass judgment

or criticize what happened back then.

"I felt unjustly attacked,

but such horrors had been committed that I couldn't indulge in self-pity.

I got off lightly."

The film is banned by military censors.

Clouzot is banned from directing for two years.

It wasn't until Max Ophuls's The Sorrow and the Pity in 1971

that France finally agrees to face its history head-on.

Clouzot is ahead of his time. Too far ahead.

The artist in him makes him reject a comfortable stance.

In his subject matter

he's always stepping outside his comfort zone,

testing moral boundaries.

You're amazing.

You think people are all good or all bad.

That Good is light

and Evil is dark.

But where does each begin?

Where does evil end?

Are you on the good side or the bad side?

It's clear we all carry corruption in our hearts.

We'd just usually rather not know about it.

We close our eyes

and bury it so deep in our subconscious

that we convince ourselves we're pure. We're not.

"The Gospels always bothered me,

because they had no answer to the problem of evil.

Of all mysteries, that of evil seemed to me the deepest."

Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

People call me a pessimist, which is wrong.

If I weren't an optimist, I wouldn't try to improve people with my films.

A pessimist? Yes. But is that a fault?

After all, humanity has a very dark side.

I'd call it a fertile pessimism,

for it makes us ponder what human nature truly is.

It helps us take off our blinders and not be fooled by events.

But beneath his apparent self-confidence...

the pessimism Clouzot is accused of is turned mainly against himself.

A new attempt at keeping a journal:

"What matters isn't to fight one's adversaries

but one's own weaknesses."

I never rewatch my films. It's too agonizing.

"I'm an idiot! I should have done this or that...

anything but what I did."

But that's utterly pointless. It's over and done with.

Better to make a new film and forget the old one.

"Why this constant doubt?"

"This need to express myself fully...

and the certainty that I never will."

"Nevertheless, I quickly returned to work.

But my professional success hardly mattered to me.

I felt just as discouraged when it was released."

He was a perfectionist.

And since perfection is unachievable, you're always dissatisfied.

He was jealous, dissatisfied.

But he was fine with that. No one forced it on him.

He relished it.

He relished both his flaws and his strengths.

He cultivated them. They were what drove him.

He constantly doubted his work. SET DESIGNER

"You think it's any good? I don't know...

Let's rehearse it." So we'd rehearse.

We'd try different staging. We'd play around.

Suzy Delair was living with him at the time.

He'd call her and say, "Come over. We're rehearsing.

No, I need you now. Get dressed.

I don't care. Skip your appointment."

She lived down in Seville

And from square to villa

She had the greatest skill

Of all the gypsy girls there

Others had lovelier faces CLOUZOT'S COMPANION

But she put them in their places

Her gift wasn't commonplace

There was nothing to compare

When he was interested, it was with a passion.

He was only interested in people

who'd become part of his work.

I've almost always mixed

my professional and private lives,

either by copying characters from real life

or by using emotions I had felt

or that others had felt toward me,

often reversing those two.

And I also included my romantic partners in my work.

He was a vampire.

He had an unerring instinct for finding people

who might interest him,

who'd fuel his creative fire...

or his personal hell.

I won't be your pawn

So with her tra-la-la Her petite tra-la-la

She set out to capture her prey

With one quick tra-la-la She went tra-la-la

And Pedro's defenses gave way

I met Suzy Delair

when she was in a show before the war.

I'd written a few songs for her. I got my start writing songs.

I wrote for Marianne Oswald and for Gilles and Julien.

- And she sang? - I sang.

Henri-Georges made wonderful use of Suzy...

her insolence...

her way of being.

That's how Suzy really was.

I was lucky to have met Clouzot. VOICE OF SUZY DELAIR

He gave me advice and paved my way.

He told me, "Don't try to be different.

Don't imitate a certain type or have a 'gimmick.'

Be yourself."

Stage fright makes me sweat buckets. My undies are soaked.

- Let's see. - The shock would kill you.

He had one shortcoming or flaw,

an especially cruel one for an artist:

He lacked imagination.

He always surrounded himself

with screenwriters and co-authors.

On his own, he was crippled.

He couldn't work on his own.

He needed a constant supply of ideas.

It was his only shortcoming.

Was he aware of it?

Painfully so! It was a source of anxiety.

Like an addict who needs his dose,

he was dependent on the ideas of others.

Did you inspire some of his dialogue?

Yes, often.

- Often? - Very often.

If he were poor, he'd have been in jail long ago.

He'd ask how I'd reply, and I'd tell him.

There you go!

The capitalists! The big fortunes!

- Can we go? - Go ahead.

He'd write it down. "That works. Great."

You're jealous of the rich.

Well, I want my share of their dough. I'm all for royalty.

Your dad was a laborer.

So what? Under Louis XV, I'd have been Madame de Pompadour.

I'd have heated up their tights!

You're being despicable.

I always insisted that she keep her vaudeville style.

Very few women have her gift for comedy.

In her last film with Clouzot,

Suzy Delair reprises her role of impetuous wife.

Her ambition and her husband's jealousy

make them both prime suspects in a murder.

It's a film noir.

It takes place in cabarets.

There's music, rhythm.

It bears comparison

to great American films.

You might compare it to Some Like It Hot, for example.

But this film is just as good, if not better,

because it has a realistic element.

There's a real crime...

real murders...

real cops and interrogations...

clouds of cigarette smoke at police headquarters...

the stench of stale cigarette butts.

It's a curious thing.

I think that before I came along,

no French filmmaker making crime thrillers

had ever set foot in police headquarters.

I spent four months there.

Every shot is accurate.

If you want to learn how to fit lots of characters

into an interior shot,

Quai des Orfevres is the film to watch. FILMMAKER

All the interrogation scenes

contain six or seven characters.

You wonder how he fit them all in.

Quiet, for chrissake!

You left the Eden and went to the Villa St-Marceaux.

Don't be thick. You know we'll get you.

Say yes and we'll call it a night.

It's very realistic. In fact, you could say...

his films are part documentary.

You'll get this when you tell us you were there.

But I wasn't there! Get off my back! I've had enough!

Yet its realism is transcended

by a style of direction

that often leans toward abstraction.

I think I'll have me a cig.

Some shots owe a lot to Clouzot's time in Germany,

where he worked before the war,

and to his vision of German Expressionism.

That's for sure.

You see it in the lighting

and in his deep faith

in the expressive force

of lighting angles and framing.

You sense the strong influence of Fritz Lang and Murnau.

He often spoke of them.

I think his films were almost always working

to redeem the discredited. CLOUZOT'S BROTHER

Jouvet said to me once...

"That guy's like a character out of Dickens."

I think that's the best description of Clouzot's work.

Especially in Quai des Orfevres,

there was a truthfulness

and a populist aspect,

in the positive sense,

that you only find in certain great novels.

Clouzot is fantastic CARTOONIST

at showing how people really live:

the concierge's lodge,

the staircase, the apartment, and so on.

It's all interesting on a graphic level.

I love the shabbiness,

the rundown furniture.

You see that in almost all his films.

By refusing to divide humanity into good and bad,

Clouzot challenged the very concept of social hierarchy.

We're all equal because we're all guilty.

Or we could be, which to him is the same thing.

There are more stories to be told about the down-and-out,

about those who have trouble surviving.

There are more stories to tell.

I fell in love at one point.

I never even mentioned it flat out, but he said to me...

"You're happy. You no longer interest me."

I find that remarkable.

We still saw each other, but as friends.

But what a great line!

"You're happy. You no longer interest me."

He was only happy seeking out others' flaws.

He took pleasure

in revealing how other people's lives weren't working.

You care for your friend well enough.

Well or badly, I love her.

I know. I'll try to bail her out of this.

I think I know the real culprit.

Thank you.

Don't thank me. I'm just doing my job.

Besides, I have to admit, I've taken a liking to you...

Miss Dora Monnier.

Me?

Because you and I are two of a kind.

When it comes to women, we'll never have a chance.

He took particular interest

in people who couldn't find love

or who felt some sort of guilt from childhood.

Georges is no saint.

He likes vice in people, in his characters.

But like all great artists,

he explores the problem in depth.

We all have our obsessions,

but I personally prefer a guy with vices

who can accept the vice in others

to a fellow who's virtuous but intolerant.

Though the film is renowned as a classic in the genre

and finally brought Clouzot unanimous acclaim in the film world, BEST DIRECTOR, VENICE 1947

it marks the end of a certain aspiration.

Slate!

Brasil, scene 1.

I was sick of traditional screenplays and their tired plots.

For Brasil, I didn't even have to go looking for an idea.

It appeared very naturally in my life.

It's not a typical film.

Just as this is my actual apartment and not a set,

nothing you'll see onscreen will be made up or faked.

Usually you're shown a fake story played by real actors.

This time, you'll see a real story

performed by nonactors.

He reinvents himself before our eyes

and steps through the screen to direct

his own life in a strange mix of genres.

This true story has a prologue

that has already played out. I've just gotten married.

Because I love her eyes, the eyes of a kind-hearted sorceress.

"With Vera, I found love at 43. I was on fire.

We never left each other's side. My life had found meaning.

My selfishness didn't disappear. It expanded to make room for two.

Between us, we'd share the world."

The candor and exhibitionism of a once-jaded man

who can't believe he's finally found true love.

As a professional voyeur,

Clouzot can't help but film the object of his fascination.

I'm filming! Leave me alone!

Where was I?

At first it was just a lovers' voyage.

I wanted to visit Brazil because Vera is Brazilian.

We met Henri-Georges Clouzot at the bustling port of Marseille.

Can you tell us about the film you've started shooting here?

It's a travelogue that will differ from a documentary

in that it will be entirely subjective.

I don't know if the country's social issues will interest me

more than its picturesque aspects.

That's all we'll ever know about the documentary.

It's abruptly halted by Brazilian authorities as too dangerous.

But it will inspire Clouzot's two greatest films,

starting with his most iconic...

The Wages of Fear.

One drop of this liquid....

Experienced drivers sought...

for dangerous work.

Good pay.

All washed up in a seedy South American town,

several idle characters try to change their fortunes

by agreeing to drive run-down trucks

packed with nitroglycerine over rough terrain.

None will survive.

At a certain point...

you get tired of telling the eternal story

about a husband, wife, and lover, or about small-town life in France.

I saw my chance to make in France

what the Americans have made many times

but has rarely been attempted in Europe:

a true action film,

but one where the men's inner struggles

are as violent as the external events.

10...

Leave it!

12, 13, 14!

Action films are rare in French cinema.

They're hard to make.

One day Rene Clair said...

"I wouldn't have done it for a billion francs!

I'd never get involved in such a crazy venture."

It would have been easier on a soundstage,

as was customary at the time,

but Clouzot wanted to break with tradition.

Years before the New Wave,

he believed in the power of real locations and real experiences.

The film suffered a breakdown.

Out with the umbrellas! Bad weather halted filming

that October.

I remember a full-page article

published during the shoot

that claimed I had single-handedly TORRENTIAL RAINS DELAY SHOOTING

sunk French cinema with my ridiculous demands.

It might have ended there, but seven months later,

in June 1952,

shooting begins again with a new producer.

Against all odds...

the film will finally be completed.

At 10, when I saw this film, FILMMAKER

I shook with emotion.

I was all worked up. My palms were moist.

I needed to use the bathroom, but I couldn't.

I didn't want to miss a thing.

Something might happen while I was gone.

Terror filled me as I watched.

It's pure suspense...

and the direction is absolutely brilliant: FILMMAKER

all the pitfalls along the way,

everything threatening these men

who are risking their lives with every jolt of their truck.

Surprise only lasts a moment...

but with suspense, the longer it lasts,

the more it drives viewers crazy.

The tension in those slow movements is incredible.

It's like walking on ice or on a razor's edge.

I was struck by how the sound

helps builds the suspense too.

The downshifting...

accelerating, slowing down...

and stopping.

It's like musique concrete!

Any hack director would have drowned it in music.

Clouzot uses only sounds.

It's a way of challenging Hollywood's usual tricks

and attempting something new.

Clouzot is brilliant at choosing what to show.

We don't know why the truck blew up.

We just hear an explosion.

That's a magnificent moment visually.

We sense their deaths through a close-up of a cigarette being rolled.

In terms of masterful direction,

it's simply magnificent.

If you stop, you'll never get started again.

We got no choice.

Okay.

Hurry up!

Wait, wait!

Let me move this.

Wait!

Stop!

Get out of the way!

I can't!

I'm stuck!

Move!

Mario, stop!

It's absolutely brilliant.

In that moment of pure sadism...

lies something very powerful.

Their relationship is truly sadomasochist.

Yves Montand slaps Vanel,

Vanel whimpers.

Their dominant-submissive relationship is completely sexualized.

It's very powerful.

It's the soul of the film.

He must have believed -

rightly or wrongly, I don't know -

that sadomasochism ruled the world.

I agree that the desire for power and domination

is certainly a key...

in human relationships.

But he wasn't a sexual pervert.

It was a way of seeing relationships,

a way of decoding them.

I knew nothing about sadomasochism, but I learned that, for Clouzot,

a true sadist is also a masochist.

What should be the role of the man and the woman in a marriage?

The roles of dictator and slave.

Woman is the dictator, man is the slave.

Bravo! I agree totally!

The awards at Cannes were announced tonight.

The Palme d'Or went to The Wages of Fear,

and Best Actor went to Charles Vanel in the same film.

The Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Bear in Berlin,

London's BAFTA Best Film Award.

The film's iconic images are shown worldwide

and prove Clouzot the equal of the greats in cinema.

Vera has a secondary but unsettling role,

a mix of desire and submission.

But it's just the beginning.

The film's success leads to a starring role for her.

Diabolique is a really interesting film CLOUZOT'S MASTERPIECE

because it's a curious example of a great actress, Simone Signoret,

acting in true tandem in many scenes

with a weaker, less experienced actress.

Something very intriguing emerges from this clash

of mismatched actresses with differing abilities.

Vera Clouzot's inexperience

ends up working in her character's favor.

It underlines the element of manipulation.

Good screenwriting is about writing for your specific actors.

Hitchcock once told me he chose his actors based on their flaws.

You can always try to play up their strengths,

but you can't get rid of their flaws,

so it's best to use them.

During their trip to Brazil,

Clouzot was fascinated to learn how superstitious Vera was.

When an oracle announced ill omens for the couple,

Clouzot saw the fear on his wife's face.

She warned him about dark forces...

and he decided to use that as the basis for Diabolique.

The wife and the mistress join forces to kill the husband.

I may be a bit old-fashioned,

but this is absolutely astounding.

The legal wife consoling the mistress.

No, no, and no.

I'd like to die and never see him again.

Die, my sweet. Die quickly.

We'll give you a nice funeral and finally be rid of you.

The school won't suffer, and I'll feel much better.

But the corpse disappears.

- He isn't there anymore? - No, he isn't.

Does a corpse that disappears seem natural to you?

Returned from the dead,

his ghost seems to torment his diabolical wife.

A remarkable thing about Clouzot is that he doesn't need dialogue

or elaborate staging to terrify viewers.

He terrifies them discreetly

with little details.

His style is to show the tension and fear

that reside in the shadows.

He has a talent for terrifying viewers with the unseen.

And at the core of this intrigue, this spectacle,

Clouzot incorporates his wife's real-life heart condition.

It was madness.

If your wife has a heart problem...

you don't put her in films.

You put her in a lounge chair with some knitting

and an orangeade.

That's not love.

It's certifiable madness.

I imagine there were personal and other factors at play.

She probably asked him, "Why don't you give me a role?"

So he had no choice.

But at the same time,

he shouldn't have deluded himself.

He worked her extremely hard.

Filming was terribly stressful,

with lots of takes.

That's due to the fact

that when you're aiming for a certain intensity on set,

you have to give yourself to it completely.

If you yourself aren't totally tense and concentrated,

feeling the very terror you're trying to express,

nothing happens.

Quiet on the set. Silence!

Camera.

- Action! - What a job!

You have to act, Gisele!

You're in such a hurry we hardly see you.

We don't even realize it's you.

Should I wait a beat after "action"?

No, sweetheart. That's not the point.

The camera has an incredibly sharp eye.

If the terror isn't real, viewers won't believe it.

For Clouzot, you can only convey what you're feeling.

This is where you mustn't speak too fast.

If you want to capture

a character's suffering as if in a documentary,

you have to make the actor suffer.

So he slaps his actors and treats them badly.

He's very rough.

He creates terrible tension on set. Many people have reported that.

We've heard about his violence toward actors, particularly toward you.

Sure, he slapped me, but that's because he's crazy.

It was actually very funny.

You have to put an actor into a certain nervous state.

And if he can't find that state on his own after various takes,

you have to help him...

by any means necessary.

When he was on set,

I think he really enjoyed dominating others.

That's for sure.

Now, it either worked or it didn't.

Thus the dark legend around Clouzot is born.

Paradoxically, it's great for publicity

with a scandal-hungry press.

Reporters looking for scoops crowd his sets,

hoping to witness the next outburst.

The event of the week is Clouzot's film La Verite.

We're here with the director of Le Corbeau,

Quai des Orfevres, and The Wages of Fear.

Things didn't go very well between them,

because he was used to slapping his actresses.

One day he slapped her,

and she slapped him back and stomped on his foot.

It was a big drama! BARDOT'S DRESSER

But he got the message. Things went smoothly after that.

Being around Clouzot had its dangers.

But if it wasn't working after a few days,

he got rid of you.

However, if you engaged with him and played his game,

things got complicated.

Because the point wasn't just to go along with everything.

You had to rebel

and stand up to him,

but not in a stupid, knee-jerk fashion.

It was complicated.

So yes, it was dangerous,

but as all the actors who worked with him agree,

including Bardot, they went back for more.

Brigitte had never looked so -

With him she's incredibly natural, beautiful - it's all there.

He made her shine.

He didn't behave as he did just to get her down.

For his tenth film, ironically entitled La Verite,

Clouzot denounces the absurdity of the legal system.

With a girl like that, truth may be the best defense for once.

But which truth?

He adopts Andre Malraux's phrase:

"To judge is clearly not to understand,

because if one understood, one couldn't judge."

I wasn't ready to marry. I just wanted us to be happy.

Is happiness incompatible with respectability?

Is marriage so respectable?

In the dock...

Bardot once again embodies a sexually liberated generation.

She's sleeps around and urges Sami Frey to bed her own sister.

So what are you waiting for? She might lighten up.

In short, everything that shocks and frightens

the conservative society in whose name justice is meted out.

Is it a documentary about the actress playing the role,

or is it about the character?

But Gilbert did love me!

You just don't want to admit it! You can't bear to!

That's the only truth!

I was silly and cruel, with flaws galore...

but he loved me anyway!

Now I'll never see him again.

That scene was done in one take.

I could only give my best performance with the first swell of emotion,

unlike professional actors

whose acting gets better with every take.

I couldn't do that.

Clouzot got me worked up into a state of despair

just before doing the scene.

I didn't allow her to rehearse.

I'd get her worked up as needed,

then throw her in front of the camera,

and she'd get it on the first take.

He'd say "action" and I'd go for it.

Never again, you hear?

So do as you like with me! I'm not afraid!

You sit there in your ridiculous outfits!

You judge me, but you've never lived or loved!

That's why you hate me - because you're all dead!

For me, her performance in the last 45 minutes

is some of the best work ever by any actress in a film.

Even more so since it's Bardot,

who was seen as frivolous and superficial.

Suddenly she's this tragic character.

I was no longer myself,

yet the emotions I was expressing were real.

I wasn't acting.

Clouzot was always pushing the boundaries of his era

to capture something new.

But his exploration of this new territory

where reality and fiction blur

wasn't without its perils.

In a strange echo of the film,

Bardot tries to kill herself after the shoot ends.

Clouzot too has a brush with death,

when his first heart attack knocks him unconscious.

With Vera, the game of submission and domination

takes a particularly dramatic turn.

"I'm a monster with the face of a madman,

selfishly pushing her to madness and death.

I don't let her rest. I smoke constantly.

She wonders why she left her ex-husband."

Clouzot continues, "And it's not just her.

No one loves me or ever has loved me -

not my mother, nor any woman, nor any girlfriend."

"My love," writes Vera to Henri-Georges,

"I haven't been nice. I'm sorry I'm not a better person.

You deserve to have me always at your feet.

I promise to be very sweet.

I love and adore you. Your little monster, Vera."

We just received news of the death of Vera Clouzot,

wife of the director of Diabolique, The Wages of Fear, and Les Espions.

Clouzot learned the tragic news

upon flying in from Nice.

Her residence, the Hotel George V, was quickly swarmed by photographers.

Our reporter, Philippe Real, was on the scene.

He interviewed the police chief,

who said the medical examiner ruled it a natural death.

There will be no investigation.

With Vera's consent...

Clouzot had filmed Death's approach,

making us voyeurs and reluctant accomplices

as we watch these images that remain forever troubling.

Is it the ardent love of a passionate filmmaker?

The perverse pleasure of the artist?

Or the impotence of a man terrified his wife might die

who can only exorcise that terror by putting it on-screen?

Clouzot constantly pushes the boundaries in search of something new.

It would be a great mistake to think of Clouzot

solely as the great classic filmmaker

behind Quai des Orfevres, Le Corbeau, or La Verite.

He is that, but there's more.

He knew that to express

the most extreme and demented aspects of human nature,

he'd have to go beyond the limits of cinema and its technology

and explore other arts

like sculpture, painting, and innovations in music.

You must never allow yourself to stagnate.

What was interesting 15 years ago remains so,

but you have to explore what's happening now.

You should always be searching, or you might as well quit.

Clouzot rubs shoulders with giants:

His work with conductor Herbert von Karajan

and Pablo Picasso

makes him a major art-film figure.

His aim isn't just to reach a goal but to surpass it.

He instinctively senses that cinema must go further

and break away from cliched plots,

from the tricks of the trade,

which leads to an experimental style of cinema.

This is clear in L'Enfer.

He quickly intuits that the character's jealous hallucinations

can only be conveyed

by shredding cinematic conventions

and pushing the boundaries of what's possible technically.

Clouzot sets out to shatter conventional narrative.

In L'Enfer, he uses the main character's mental confusion

to mix past, present, reality, and fantasy

in an incredible kaleidoscope.

No art that is not free can be complete.

But no director in a very long time has been completely free.

We never have enough film, time, or money.

One of the film's problems was

that Clouzot was the only one in charge.

He did exactly what he wanted,

how and when he wanted it.

It was a crew of over 100 people,

with three teams shooting simultaneously,

often getting in each other's way.

The idea was that Clouzot would go from set to set,

theoretically speeding up filming.

The shoot went badly. Plus, he was sick.

And he fell victim to his own megalomania.

I don't remember how old he was, but he was no spring chicken.

To try to juggle three film crews at once isn't very sensible.

He'd always been sickly, with a weak constitution.

Now he had a heart attack,

and the film was abruptly halted.

You have to be a megalomaniac, or everyone would be a director.

But not too much of one, because it quickly becomes a trap.

Many of the greatest directors

were victims of their own megalomania.

Fellini, for example. One of the greatest ever.

He died without ever making the film he'd always dreamed of making.

I think Clouzot was very ambitious,

and that's a huge asset in this profession.

Better to be ambitious than not!

And he was. He aspired to produce works of art.

Striving to be a true artist

is a very ambitious and perilous endeavor.

You could say that L'Enfer killed him...

even if not immediately.

Forcing a director to stop working is like killing him.

He did go back to work,

but he never again had -

how can I put it? -

the strength to tackle major projects.

Clouzot classifies, summarizes, theorizes, diagrams, organizes,

and tries to master his story to the point of exhaustion.

He'd always second-guess everything

and tear apart his work from the day before.

It was rough not only on him

but on his co-screenwriters too.

It grew out of control, like a cancer.

Toward the end of his life, the last ten years,

no matter what had been written, he'd pick it apart the next day,

so nothing moved forward.

You were always at a dead end.

He no longer knew what to film.

He'd have writers bringing him ideas all the time.

I myself spent an afternoon talking with him,

like all the other writers he'd summon.

He'd see three writers a day, young and old.

"What's your story about?"

We'd all tell him our stories and leave...

and he'd do nothing.

- Do you have faith in yourself? - No. Less every day.

- Less every day? - That's right.

"October 8, 1970. It can't go on like this.

Must I live out whatever time is left to me?

The slightest thought leads to anxiety."

With his last wife, Ines, Clouzot seeks spiritual salvation.

"The idea of damnation.

If God created us, why does he allow such suffering?"

"Death now wears Vera's face.

It's a sweet Death that will come for me,

offering its cold lips and soft, slim hands.

If Vera can judge, how will she judge?

I'm not afraid.

I have faith in her love."

In November 1977...

Henri-Georges Clouzot is found dead in his office.

He took his fears with him

and left us with ten of the greatest French films ever.

Near his splayed-out body...

his stereo played

Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust.

Staged like a true director...