'Don't be diabolical,' a title card says at the end of the film. 'Don't destroy the interest your friends might take in this film. Don't tell them what you have seen. Thank you on their behalf.' This kindly instruction must refer to the tricky ending rather than the whole movie. It can't spoil things if we say we have just seen Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, soon to be shown in a new print at the British Film Institute and around the country; or that this is one of the great murder movies; or that France has never looked seedier on film. It's also a bit late to be worrying about such an instruction, since it belongs to a work first released in 1955. But I am going to keep quiet about the ending because it is one of the film's great pleasures, and not everyone will know what's coming.

LRB 3 March 2011 | PDF Download