Henri-Georges Clouzot

PLOT: Short of cash for his private clinic, a French psychiatrist accepts money from a NATO Intelligence agent to shelter a defecting Soviet-bloc scientist but enemy spies are closing-in.Read More »

PLOT: A classical tragic romance transposed to a World War II setting, Clouzot’s film follows the travails of Manon (Cécile Aubry), a village girl accused of collaborating with the Nazis who is rescued from imminent execution by a former French Resistance fighter (Michel Auclair). The couple move to Paris, but their relationship turns stormy as they struggle to survive, resorting to profiteering, prostitution and even murder. Eventually escaping to Palestine, the pair attempt a treacherous desert crossing in search of the happiness which seems to forever elude them…Read More »

Synopsis
The first film made up of sketches made by different directors. All deal with the return of prisoners in their native France after WW2.Read More »

Steve Seid writes:
Clouzot’s final foray into features takes us into another tortured love triangle to explore voyeurism and, by extension, the very gaze that so draws us to cinema. Josée (Elisabeth Wiener) meets her artist-lover’s gallerist, the chic but kinky Stanislas Hessler (Laurent Terzieff), whose hobby is photographing female nudes in S&M postures. Naturally, Josée succumbs to the temptation to pose, but finds she needs bonding not bondage. Enter the obsessive kinetic artist Gilbert (Bernard Fresson), and the triangulated trap is sprung. Like Peeping Tom, Woman in Chains uses the camera’s gaze as a substitute for our own voyeuristic impulse.Read More »

A burglar slips inside a middle-class apartment. Believing he could work quietly, he’s surprised by a couple in evening dress.

An expressionist comedy greatly influenced by German Expressionism set in a bohemian enclave of northern Paris, which Clouzot made shortly before he served as assistant director to Anatole Litvak and E.A. Dupont and began scripting French versions of German films at Berlin’s UFA studios.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson:
Released shortly after Luciano Emmer’s documentary Picasso, H. G. Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso managed to attain better international bookings than the earlier film, largely on the strength of Clouzot’s worldwide hit Les Diaboliques. Like Emmer before him, Clouzot offers rare and precious glimpses of Pablo Picasso at work. The film traces two of the artist’s paintings, from inception to pencil sketch to final product. The director comes as close as humanly possible to defining the genius of Picasso within the parameters of the camera lens. Oddly, Le Mystère Picasso does not appear on many of the “official” lists of Clouzot’s films, even though it won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.Read More »

Plot summary from IMDB:
Dominique Marceau is on trial for the murder of Gilbert Tellier. The counsels duel relentlessly, elaborating explanations for why the pretty, idle and fickle girl killed the talented and ambitious conductor freshly graduated from the conservatory. Was it passion, vengeance, desperation, an accident? The acquaintances of Gilbert testify, as well as Dominique’s former lovers, and her sister, Annie, the studious violin player engaged to Gilbert. The evidence they give progressively paints a more finely-shaded picture of the personalities of Dominique and Gilbert, and of their relationship, than the eloquent and convincing justifications of the counsels.Read More »