Les Diaboliques

There’s more than a corpse missing in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1955 masterpiece.

So is any sense of human warmth and compassion, the Wages Of Fear man instead presenting a bleak world full of suspicion, manipulation, fear and loathing.

Ill-treated wife Vera Clouzot teams up with her hubby’s mistress (Simone Signoret) to kill him, only to find his cadaver going awol.

The ending, much copied, is justly famous. But it’s the implacable build-up that seals its classic status, a rundown school providing a suitably ominous backdrop for a finely crafted mystery with a diabolical twist.

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