In 1964 Henri-Georges Clouzot, the director of thrillers such as Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, began work on what was to be his most adventurous film to date. L'Enfer (Inferno) was a dark psychological study charting the mental disintegration of hotel owner Marcel (Serge Reggiani), consumed by jealousy at the supposed infidelity of his pretty flirtatious wife, played by Romy Schneider in her prime. Clouzot wanted to make a film unlike anything he or anyone else had done before. The story of the obsessive husband and the wife he believes is cheating was similar to his earlier work, but the style was to be wildly experimental, closer to Man Ray than Hitchcock to whom he had been frequently compared. Backed by money from a major American studio Clouzot spent months in Paris, experimenting with new ways to shoot a film before taking his cast and crew to a hotel on a lake with railroad bridge that were crucial to his setting. Once there, Clouzot himself became obsessed shooting the same scenes over and over again, running way behind schedule and driving many of his colleagues to the breaking point. Serge Reggiani walked off the set and as he attempted to replace him, the increasingly manic Clouzot suffered a heart attack. The film was never finished, but famed film historian/ preservationist Serge Bromberg made it his obsession to find the footage from the 18 days of shooting and with the help of Clouzot's window Ines, he did. Bromberg and Medrea then tracked down surviving members of the cast and crew who recount a director every bit as obsessed and unstable as his protagonist. It is the surviving material from Inferno itself that is the star. A kaleidoscope of color, angles, filters, and technique, that show what an extraordinary masterpiece Inferno could have been. Subtitled. More at clouzotsinferno.com 35mm
2009, color, 1 hour 42 minutes, France