Review by Roger Carpenter
After several critical and financial successes, Henri-Georges Clouzot was at the top of his game as a filmmaker. Widely considered one of the greatest French filmmakers and continental Europe’s answer to Hitchcock, Clouzot had directed such genuine classics as Le Corbeau, Quai des Orfevres, The Wages of Fear, and Diabolique. By this time he was being courted by many large film companies, but it was Columbia who won out, giving him complete creative control and an unlimited budget to create what was to be his masterpiece: L’enfer (Inferno in English).
Clouzot, rightly recognizing this exceptional opportunity, set to work creating a unique slice of cinema. L’enfer was to tell the story of a newlywed couple, he a middle-aged man and she a twenty-something debutante. But soon after the nuptials, the new husband, Marcel, spirals into jealousy and paranoia, convinced his wife, Odette, is sleeping with others. It was to be somewhat of a companion piece to Diabolique, itself a masterful tale of paranoia.
Clouzot assembled a stellar cast which included Serge Reggiani as Marcel and Romy Schneider as Odette. Reggiani was already a well-known and well-respected actor with roles in 1958’s Les Miserables and Visconti’s The Leopard. He would go on to be even more successful as a recording star beginning in 1965. Schneider was a major starlet who rivaled Sophia Loren in popularity. She began her career with the extremely popular Sissi trilogy and followed this up by working with major directors such as Orson Welles, Otto Preminger, and Luchino Visconti. Clouzot also assembled not one, not two, but three full film crews, each comprised of some of the highest quality technicians in Europe. Clouzot then embarked upon months of film tests, becoming obsessive over developing techniques and footage unique enough to become part of his vision.
Then it all fell apart.
Never terribly healthy, Clouzot had become dangerously obsessed with the film. He almost never slept, interrupting his film technicians at all hours of the night to discuss certain film points. He shot certain scenes endlessly, seemingly never satisfied with the takes. In one instance, a scene where a young woman gets swatted on the behind on a sidewalk café was shot so many times her buttocks were bruised at the end of the day. He fought with Reggiani who eventually walked off the set, or was forced to leave due to illness, depending upon who tells the story. Schneider also walked off the set in protest of Reggiani’s leaving but was convinced to return when Reggiani was replaced by Jean Louis Trintignant—who also left only a few days into filming. The obsession, stress, and tension ultimately caused Clouzot to suffer a debilitating heart attack only three weeks into filming. The film folded, the insurance company paid up, and the reels of film, including all test footage as well as actual film footage, went to the insurance company. Eventually all the footage disappeared, Clouzot passed away, and his widow refused to discuss the film, leaving the story to sink into obscurity.
Decades later, Serge Bromberg, the founder of film preservation company Lobster Films, and a lover of Clouzot’s cinema, determined to discover the lost canisters of film, if at all possible, with an eye toward possibly reconstructing part of Clouzot’s vision. This documentary tells the tale of Bromberg’s dogged detective work and relentless pursuit of discovery as well as what was truly a remarkable find. Bromberg assumed, that with less than three weeks of filming, there would be only a handful of film canisters. However, he hadn’t counted on all the test footage being preserved as well, so he found nearly 200 canisters of well-preserved film, all hidden in plain sight and documented by French preservationists.
Bromberg’s story of discovery is as fascinating as the story of L’enfer itself. Supported by remarkable test footage as well as behind-the-scenes footage, the story of L’enfer and of Bromberg’s search for the film elements is riveting. We also get scenes from the actual film as well as reenactments by modern actors since the original sound elements still remain undiscovered. And finally, we get in-depth interviews with a number of Clouzot’s closest collaborators, who took part in the planning, filming, testing, and editing of L’enfer as it was being created. Taken together, all of these elements show that Clouzot’s vision was fascinating and, if the film had been completed, very well may have been one of the most unique films to come out of Europe in many a decade. Of course, the irony here is that Clouzot’s downfall was his monomaniacal obsession with the film—from a man who had made a career of exploring obsession. And while there isn’t enough footage to even begin to guess if the film would have been good or bad, the test footage for various scenes is certainly remarkable. Even if the film had been a flop, I suspect the images contained within the film would have been highly influential on future filmmaking in Europe and abroad. It’s nice to finally see some of these images, even if they are totally without any context.
I enjoyed the film because I was interested in seeing these long-lost images as I am a fan of Clouzot. I also enjoyed Bromberg’s story of discovering the film, of him convincing Ms. Clouzot to allow him access to the film elements, and his excitement upon first viewing each canister of film.
Arrow Video USA’s art film imprint, Arrow Academy, has just released this documentary on Blu-Ray. Special features include French cinema expert Lucy Mazdon who discusses Clouzot’s filmography as well as the L’Enfer disaster; a featurette entitled “They Saw Inferno” which includes unseen material left out of the documentary; an interview with Bromberg; and a film introduction with Bromberg. There is also a still gallery and a trailer for the film. You can purchase the film directly from Arrow Video at http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/category/usa/ or from Amazon.
