henri‑georges clouzot’s inferno

Remember Beach Boy Brian Wilson's uncompleted symphony to God, Smile ? Maybe, though, it was in making these test shots that Clouzot's ambition went beyond his capacity to realise a film. These lurid colour sequences would be juxtaposed with black-and-white footage shot on location. And then one day, while he was filming Romy Schneider and Dany Carel having a lesbian tryst on a boat on the lake, he had a heart attack. Set in a beautiful lake side resort in the Auvergne region of France, L'Enfer (Inferno) was to be a sun scorched elucidation on the dark depths of jealousy starring Romy Schneider as the harassed wife of a controlling hotel manager (Serge Reggiani). Your support powers our independent journalism, Available for everyone, funded by readers. Clouzot was one of France’s most distinguished and respected filmmakers, with a turbulent filmmaking history but more than a few enduring classics to his name. First published on Thu 29 Oct 2009 18.10 EDT. Advertisement. In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot's production of L'Enfer came to a halt. As for the film that should have gone with it, we’re still in the dark. In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot, the acclaimed director of thriller masterpieces Les Diaboliques and Wages of Fear, began work on his most ambitious film yet. The idea was that he would later edit his way around the problem of not having his leading man on set. Both the DVD and the Blu-ray versions feature a brand-new HD transfer of the feature film with 5.1 audio and English subtitles in addition to a number of HD special features. In terms of violence to his female stars, Clouzot was a monstre sacré akin to his contemporary, Alfred Hitchcock, whom he admired and whose psychological thrillers of the 1950s and 60s bear close comparison with Clouzot's greatest films – The Wages of Fear (1953), starring Yves Montand, and Les Diaboliques (1955), with Véra Clouzot as a wronged wife who conspires with his mistress, Simone Signoret, to murder her husband. Produced by Serge Bromberg. Clouzot then had a virtually unlimited budget – but it only encouraged him to dream big and worry 24/7. Bardot had to have her stomach pumped. She entrusted the footage to Bromberg to make a film containing interviews with the crew and newly dramatised scenes based on Clouzot's script. Clouzot now decided it was too late to hire a replacement. Clouzot was hated and feted in equal measure. • This article was amended on Friday 30 October 2009. "Things weren't going well.". Called L'Enfer (Hell), the film became a real hell for the director and everyone on set. Today he is largely forgotten, or at best mistaken for the bumbling inspector in the Pink Panther franchise. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno. But we also have something extra: Claude Chabrol's 1994 film based on Clouzot's script, also called L'Enfer, starring Emmanuelle Béart as the flirtatious wife and François Cluzet as the paranoid husband. He had a nice line about that: 'I improvise on paper.'". He had insisted that, in order to demonstrate the husband's jealousy, Reggiani would have to run behind a camera car repeatedly, ostensibly following Schneider's car. In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot, the acclaimed director of thriller masterpieces Les Diaboliques and The Wages of Fear, began work on his most ambitious film yet. Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished masterpiece, L'enfer (1964), is reconstructed in this film which is part drama and part documentary. Brigitte Bardot called him "a negative being, for ever at odds with himself and the world around him". Clouzot also directed documentary films, including The Mystery of Picasso, which was declared a national treasure by the government of France. And what on-set tortures did Clouzot have in store for Schneider? Notoriously insomniac at the best of times, he rewrote the film through the nights and shot new footage during the days. Henri-Georges Clouzot's inferno Blu-ray | Arrow Films ... Arrow Films Reggiani found himself running for 10 miles a day up vertiginous mountain roads – great footage, but the ordeal took its toll. In 1964 he began work on what promised to be his most adventurous and profound piece, Inferno, a study of jealousy and madness. As you do. It originally said that Simone Signoret played … Henri-Georges Clouzot was a French film director, screenwriter and producer. Sat 7 Nov 2009 19.50 EST. "I walked into something totally insane," he recalls. In 1963, French filmmaker Henri-Georges Clouzot decided to make a movie that would reinvent the movies. Thirty years after Clouzot's death in 1977, his widow, Inès de Gonzalez, found herself trapped in a broken lift with a young film-maker. Despite huge expectations, major studio backing and an unlimited budget, after three weeks the production collapsed. The award-winning documentary about the fascinating and harrowing making of Apocalypse Now, one of the most celebrated films in American cinema. "It happened at the right moment," says Stora. The story of Inferno, a film retrieved from Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished 1964 film, Hell, should sound familiar. Clouzot started shooting at a lakeside hotel. One of L'Enfer's problems was that Clouzot had by then become notorious as a director with a taste for violence and betrayal – and not just in his films. Eligible if purchased with select payment methods. It was called Inferno, and the unfinished film was an enormous failure. Film, Documentaries. HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT"S INFERNO Blu-ray/DVD Combo was produced by Jeffrey Masino for Flicker Alley in association with MK2, Lobster Films and France 2 Cinéma. This has been corrected. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno ( 26 ) IMDb 7.5 1 h 39 min 2009 16+ However, despite huge expectations, major studio backing and an unlimited budget, after three weeks the production collapsed under the weight of arguments, technical complications and illness. It was about a man driven mad by the supposed infidelities of his beautiful wife. It was brave story to tell in a France torn apart by war; Le Corbeau was pulled from cinemas, Clouzot was fired from the Nazi-owned Continental studios and, after the war, received a lifetime ban (rescinded in 1947) from the French film industry for working with the Nazis. Fascinating look at a director’s journey into his own inferno. But that reveals rather more about its subject than Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno. In 1968's La Prisonnière, he used some of those weirdo kinetic art shots he had filmed for L'Enfer. Clouzot would make only one more film before his death in 1977. One of his first masterpieces, the 1943 film Le Corbeau, is now hailed by critics, but on release it united the French left and the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in an unlikely alliance against Clouzot's vision of pettiness and self-loathing in a small French wartime town divided by a poison-pen letter scandal. The big word of the epoch was 'improvise'. But what we learn from the documentary is that Clouzot upset his leading man much more than his leading lady. In this compelling, award-winning documentary Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea present Inferno's incredible expressionistic original rushes, screen tests, and on-location footage, whilst also reconstructing Clouzot's original vision, and shedding light on the ill-fated endeavor through interviews, dramatizations of un-filmed scenes, and Clouzot's own notes. French cinema was a-tremble with expectation: could L'Enfer repeat the success of his earlier, great films? It originally said that Simone Signoret played the wronged wife in Les Diaboliques. In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot, the acclaimed director of thriller masterpieces Les Diaboliques and The Wages of Fear, began work on his most ambitious film yet. All rights reserved. Clouzot was known as a forbiddingly meticulous metteur en scène, storyboarding his films so intensively that actors often felt thwarted. Philip French. Beginning his film career as a screenwriter, Henri-Georges Clouzot switched over to directing and in 1943 had the distinction of having his film Le Corbeau (1943) banned by both the German forces occupying France and the Free French forces fighting them, but for different reasons. The director Costa-Gavras, who worked as production assistant on L'Enfer, said: "He was criticised by the nouvelle vague for planning out everything in the script. His treatment of the story is never as bravura as Clouzot's promised to be. Documentary filmmaker Thomas Balmes charts the simultaneous early development of four babies from different parts of the world, illustrating what makes human life unique, similar and precious wherever it occurs. Recommended. Reggiani, according to other crew members, had been steeling himself against being bullied on set by the notorious Clouzot and so was already in a highly strained state. With Romy Schneider, Bérénice Bejo, Serge Reggiani, Jacques Gamblin. Delair told one interviewer. Cookies help us deliver our services. He is best remembered for his work in the thriller film genre, having directed The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, which are critically recognized as among the greatest films from the 1950s. Another actor described him as "an interfering man who wanted every actor under his control". Moreover, French cinema had been revolutionised by the nouvelle vague since his last film, and the likes of Godard and Truffaut had arguably eclipsed Clouzot. But she was not the only actress he made suffer. But just as they're settling into their reassuringly predictable holiday routine, his perennially troubled younger brother shows up, joined by a mysterious stranger seeking Bellamy's protection. It didn't revolutionise cinema, and was forgotten even in a France that cherishes its cinema. The footage, forgotten for over fifty years, were found, and film archivist Serge Bromberg uncovered a treasure trove of breathtaking imagery, telling us of what would have been a unique film. The test shots for Clouzot's L'Enfer that appear in the new documentary show that he envisaged using kinetic art in a way that parallels how Hitchcock had used Salvador Dalí's surrealist dream sequences almost 20 years earlier on Spellbound. 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