Diabolique, or: A Lesson on Keeping up with Backyard Pool Maintenance

We had such good intentions with Mental May to examine mental health in film all month; however, it took just one French period drama to fully embrace all of the Continental fashions, schemes, and casual tobacco use instead. Once again, this week’s film doesn’t exactly connect to our monthly theme unless serving as inspiration for Hitchcock’s Psycho counts (okay, that totally doesn’t count). However, I think you may be persuaded to overlook the continued neglect of our theme based on the intensity of the suspense here, the twists and turns, and healthy dose of moral ambiguity.

The Film:

Diabolique

The Premise:

A murder plot goes awry after the wife and mistress of a shady headmaster team up to stage his death as an accident.

The Ramble:

As far as boarding schools go, the one Michel Delassalle runs isn’t one of your posher options. In fact, it tends more to the 19th-century, Jane Eyre type of school in which pupils are served spoiled food to cut corners and given rather draconian punishments for minor offenses. Though his wife Christina holds the purse strings, her unspecified heart condition means she has to take it easy, and Michel is more or less free to be an unpleasant asshole all of his waking hours.

Determined to spread his misery around, Michel is openly having an affair with teacher Nicole Horner. Rather than resent each other, though, the two women seem to share a bond over how terrible and inescapable is sleazy Michel.

After a late night fight in which Michel gives Nicole a black eye, she’s decided enough is enough. Secretly showing Christina some poison stashed away at the school, Nicole suggests the timing has never been better. With the school breaking for a 3-day holiday, the two women can carry off a rather convoluted plan that basically boils down to poisoning Michel and dumping his body in the school’s pool.

Leaving early in the morning, Christina accompanies Nicole to her home in western France. Nicole rents out the upper level to a married couple who are obviously there to create extra moments of suspense, but I’m not mad about it. That night, Christina calls Michel to demand a divorce, which brings him out to confront her immediately.

Horrible people of the world, here’s your last plea to be just a little less awful: when serving Michel poisoned wine, Christina hesitates just a bit, spilling the glass down his shirt. But, of course, rather than being understanding, Michel flies off the handle, reaffirming his wife’s conviction that he’s absolutely got to go. After the poison takes effect, Nicole holds down Michel in a full tub, placing a heavy bronze statue on his chest for good measure.

After a suspenseful trip back to the school, Nicole and Christina wait for someone to discover the body in the pool. After several days pass and no body materializes underneath the layer of leaves and grime floating on the water’s surface, Nicole sets up a potentially gruesome way for one of the pupils to find the headmaster. However, nothing shows up–even when the pool is drained completely. Other eerie happenings go down when one of Michel’s suits is delivered to the school by a man matching his description, and a boy says the headmaster has punished him for misbehaving.

When a body is found in the Seine, Christina is almost relieved. However, when she goes to identify the body, it turns out it isn’t Michel after all. Noticing her distress, a retired police detective offers to help Christina track down her husband. Oh shit.

More of an anxious wreck than ever before, Christina confesses to Nicole that she’d rather this all end so she could face whatever is coming. In a shocking twist, the detective announces he has found Christina’s husband–what can that possibly mean?

The Rating:

4/5 Pink Panther Heads

To honor the warning that accompanies the end of this film, I will not spoil this for my friends (even though I’ve got to question the validity of a 65-year-old spoiler warning). I will say that this film is ridiculously suspenseful at times, and the buildup to our dramatic twist is quite satisfying. However, possibly because of the years I’ve spent watching Hitchcock (and soap operas), the twist is perhaps not quite as much of a surprise as intended. I think most fans of film will immediately latch on to several offhand remarks and have a pretty good idea of how things will end up.

That’s not to say the film lacks tension or quite horrific moments. I was genuinely shocked when Nicole sent one of the schoolchildren diving into a pool with a dead body in it. There are also some really disturbing shots of both Michel’s body and the liquids seeping from it. Even in black and white, this is vile.

It also makes me shudder that Christina considers divorce a sin, and that the terror and shame surrounding it are (in her mind) somehow worse than murder. There can certainly still be some (or even a great deal) of shame surrounding divorce, but it does seem to be more accepted today than ever before. I mean, especially if the alternative is murder? Though the fashions and casual cigarette-smoking while wearing sunglasses work aesthetically, I am once again pleased not to live during an earlier time in history.

In conclusion, this is creepy and atmospheric AF, but I was hoping for a little more fraternité between our leading ladies.

Would my blog wife uncork a nice bottle of wine with this one or serve it a bit of arsenic on the side? Read her review here to find out!

Book Review: Brighton Rock

I almost bought a copy of this novel in Brighton, which would have been perfect, but I hated the cover.  Apparently it’s a thing to have cartoony characters on the cover of this novel, which makes no sense because, in true Graham Greene fashion, the closest it comes to humor is bitterness.

There are some spoilers in this review…but this novel is nearly 80 years old and has been made into 2 different movies.  At a certain point you might want to just accept you’re never going to read it.

Brighton Rock

Graham Greene

Total pages:  247

Important note:  this is connected to another Graham Greene novel, A Gun for Sale.  However, I maintain it’s really not necessary to read the other one before this.  But who knows, I could be missing information that would bring new meaning to my reading of Brighton Rock.

Other note:  Brighton rock does not refer to a geological formation (as I believed for a really long time), but a candy stick you can buy in every.  Single.  Shop in Brighton.  The stick reads “Brighton rock” on both ends and all the way through.

Our story follows the leader of a 1930s Brighton gang in the aftermath of a murder.  Pinkie Brown is a cold, ruthless 18-year-old psychopath whose grey eyes give “an effect of heartlessness like an old man’s in which human feeling has died.”  (God damn, Graham Greene.)  Following the murder of his gang leader, Pinkie is in charge of those loyal enough to remain, and his first order of business is vengeance.

Pinkie’s target is Fred Hale, a man who betrayed the gang leader in some way, presumably (I can’t claim I understand how gangs work at all).  Just before Fred’s murder (spoiler, but I don’t think Fred even makes it to page 30), he encounters the easy-going Ida, whose bosom is described in virtually every chapter.  When Fred disappears, Ida is extremely suspicious and refuses to rest until she discovers the truth about what’s happened.

As Ida pursues Pinkie, Pinkie pursues Rose, a teenager who unknowingly holds a key piece of evidence that could implicate Pinkie in murder.  Even though the idea of romance is utterly repellent to Pinkie and he sees the traditional path of marriage and children as a slow death, he convinces Rose he loves her in order to dissuade her from talking to anyone about what she knows.  Is he willing to sacrifice his “bitter virginity” (whatever the fuck that means), his freedom, and even his eternal soul in order to keep Rose quiet?

Like basically every other Graham Greene novel ever written, this one is highly critical of the Catholic Church.  Pinkie and Rose are both Catholic, in contrast with Ida, who isn’t religious but spiritual and has a few weird superstitions about ghosts and Ouija boards.  As a child, Pinkie wanted to be a priest, and Greene draws parallels between his contempt for the rest of humanity, indifference to suffering, and disdain of sex and romantic love with the Catholic Church.  Greene also prods quite a bit at the two Catholic characters’ willingness to sin despite the promise of eternal damnation, going so far as to say “a Catholic is more capable of evil than anyone” (246).  (Ha ha, since this isn’t an English paper, I can end this paragraph with a quote and refuse to offer any explanation whatsoever!)

For some reason I didn’t get into his the first time around I tried it, but I LOVED it this time.  It’s outrageously cynical, and the only novel I can think of in which a candy tourists buy in Brighton is used as a metaphor for the inescapability of human nature.

Fair warning that you’ll have to deal with a reasonable amount of dated ‘30s slang that feels made up, esp. re:  women.  (Both “buer” and “polony” get thrown around A LOT and I still don’t fully understand what either means.  I just kept thinking of Polonius from Hamlet and also Thelonious Monk every time someone used the word “polony.”)

The end also gets a bit melodramatic, and it’s hard not to imagine physically throwing Rose.  She’s an idiot.  Most frustrating is that Ida, the only likeable character, gets quite a lot of focus at the beginning of the novel, but then Pinkie receives more and more attention.  I was so excited when I thought (however briefly) this was actually a female-centric Greene novel.

My favorite quote is also a good test of whether you might enjoy this one or find it too dark and cynical:  “That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape––anywhere––for anyone? It was worth murdering a world” (92).  Chills, you guys.

5/5 Pink Panther Heads

The Spectator’s review on the back of the book says of Greene, “Entertaining he may always be; comforting, never,” which I think is the most accurate description of his novels I’ve ever read.  (And at the same time seems a bit like backhanded praise and also possibly written by Yoda?)  I can’t think of another writer quite like Greene; perhaps Cormac McCarthy in terms of bleakness?  John Le Carré in terms of suspense and a darker take on spying (as in The Quiet American)?  William Golding for shared views on human nature?  He’s not quite like any other writer I can think of, which is why I love him so much.

Btw, there’s apparently a 1947 film version that scandalized the nation for being too violent, which I cannot WAIT to see.