L'ENFER
A film review by Raymond Johnston
Copyright 1994 Raymond Johnston
Director: Claude Chabrol Starring: Emmanuelle Beart, Francios Cluzet Original screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot This film has not been rated.
Claude Chabrol was once the driving force behind the French New Wave. A family inheritance gave him the money to abandon magazine writing and produce his own films and those of others. His fellow Cahiers du Cinema writers: Eric Rohmer, Francios Truffaut, and Jean Luc Godard soon followed him. Over the next fifteen years the four of them turned out some of the most impressive films in history. Chabrol gained the reputation of being the "French Hitchcock." Many of his films dealt with characters driven to obsession, sometimes even murder. Buzzwords for describing his films always included cold, analytical, detached. His films had little of Hitchcock's trademark humor. Instead they were simple slice-of-life accounts of characters becoming unwound.
Henri-Georges Clouzot, who died in 1977, was also referred to as the "French Hitchcock". His career is earlier than Chabrol's. His classics include the original don't-give-away-the-secret-ending film, DIABOLIQUE, and the taught action thriller WAGES OF FEAR. His ill health forced him to abandon filming his script for L'ENFER in 1964.
Just like in Hollywood, France is now relying on retreading safe existing projects. The thirty year old script for L'ENFER has been dusted off, given a nineties polish, and put on the big screen. The resulting film, while neither Chabrol's nor Clouzot's best, is still good enough considering the famine of watchable French art films these days.
The film evokes Chabrol's early work. A few characters are trapped in the confines of their own mental shortcomings. The title roughly translates to 'the inferno' or 'hell'. The hell is the obsessive jealousness that lakeside resort owner, played by Francios Cluzet, feels toward his flirty wife, played by the beautiful Emmanuelle Beart.
The truth of what is going is hard to discern, since the film is most often told from the point of view a psychologically challenged character who cannot tell fact from obsessive fantasy. The clues, the overheard words, the remembered incidents, are all suspect of mental tampering. There is no one correct way to read the 'facts' presented in the film. Each viewer must decide what has really gone on. If in the end it is too neatly contrived to be satisfying, at least it gives the audience credit for being able to think on a complex level.
What ultimately makes the film worthwhile is Emmanuelle Beart. She has the difficult task of being a completely ambiguous character, whose uncertain actions are the core of the film. Francios Cluzet turns in a completely serviceable performance as the obsessed man. The minor characters of hotel guests and townspeople all seem natural and believable in low key performances. Emmanuelle Beart has an odd connection the screenwriter Henri-Georges Clouzot. Clouzot directed the original 1949 French version of MANON OF THE SPRING, and Beart stars in the remake.
Chabrol is at his analytical best, following characters around like an invisible voyeur, never cracking a smile, never telling a joke, never looking away from the unpleasantness. If you happen to catch L'ENFER and find it interesting, Chabrol's best early work is LES BICHES, LA RUPTURE, LE BOUCHER. Among his English language efforts are TEN DAY'S WONDER with Orson Welles and Anthony Perkins, and BLOOD RELATIVES with Donald Sutherland..
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