"Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno" is a film about an unfinished film. And in a way, the project helps serve to complete the original film, which has sat collecting dust for decades.
The first incarnation of “Inferno” was written, produced and directed by legendary French filmmaker Henri Georges Clouzot. It was a dark, experimental project that intended to tell the story of a husband (Serge Reggiani) who becomes obsessively jealous and suspicious that his young, beautiful wife (Romy Schneifer) is having an affair.
Newlyweds, they take over a small lakeside hotel in the country, just net to a massive train trestle that spans the nearby river.
As his paranoia grows, his jealousy becomes linked to the trains that cross the bridge. The rumble from the steel structure, the whistle, the smoke, all seem to trigger his fits of jealous rage.
These moments of insanity are rendered using what was at the time, cutting edge lighting, sound and special effects techniques that Clouzot and his crew essentially invented for the film.
It’s fantastic. His paranoia is illustrated perfectly when certain phrases or bits of conversation -- real or imagined – begin to repeat themselves mercilessly in his head, the tempo speeding up and slowing down like a wind sprint.
In other moments, the camera stays on Romy for long, mesmerizing shots, where she seems to dance for the camera using little more than facial expressions. Tricks of lighting make her face appear as if it is almost changing shape in these moments.
In another long, eerie scene she is pouring sparkling water from a bottle into a glass. As it overflows she laughs and continues to pour. The scene is strange but riveting, even though nothing really happens.
That’s sort of the story of this film about a film. Despite having American backing, in the form of an unlimited budget and timeline from Columbia Pictures, high-ranking French cinema stars and the best crews available, nothing really happened.
Clouzot seemed to get lost in the details, spending endless time, energy and money on mere moments of the film, or on meticulous storyboards and technical specs for every single frame.
In the end he lost track of the story and vision that should have tied the narrative and special effects together. In the end he drove away one of his stars, frustrated the crew and drove himself to a heart attack.
The new film – I hesitate to call it a documentary because so much of it comprises the original footage – pieces together a lot of the mistakes and tracks the lack of direction and communication that seemed to plague the project, mostly through interviews with many involved with the film.
It also explores Clouzot’s brilliance through interviews with those he worked closely with and by showing exhaustively the original footage, test shots, experiments and even out-takes from the five abandoned canisters of film Clouzot left behind.
Bromberg says the inspiration for the film was borne when he was trapped in an elevator with Clouzot’s widow for several hours, by chance, and he was able to question her about the intriguing unfinished project, a sort of “Titanic” of its time.
I hope she considers the new film to be tribute to her husband’s legacy and not a criticism of it. Yes, at times the film seems critical of Clouzot’s almost maniacal directing style, which is almost a mirror image of the film’s obsessed character. But the real service is that Bromberg came as close as anyone could to finishing the film.
He even has actors script read the scenes that were never shot, helping to fill out the missing pieces – a technique that works amazingly well in this film.
This film may not appeal to a wide audience, and it’s definitely targeted at true cinephiles. But as someone who doesn’t know much about French cinema but still likes a good yarn and appreciates innovative film-making, I was pretty riveted and was glad I got to see it – if only for the crazy-weird scenes and fantastic special effects that look like they could have been shot yesterday.
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