Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

4 / 5 stars
This assemblage of lost footage is perhaps more fascinating than the actual completed film would have been, says Peter Bradshaw
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (2009)
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno PR

Film historian Serge Bromberg tells the riveting story of one of cinema ­history's great "lost" movies: L'Enfer by Henri-Georges Clouzot, the demanding and exacting master who made classics such as The Wages of Fear and the great Vichy parable Le Corbeau. In the 1960s, stung by mockery from the new wave youngsters that his conventional dramas were old hat, Clouzot embarked on a wildly experimental work, a Hitchcockian, proto-Kubrickian extravaganza which led him into a creative menopausal breakdown.

The story of a married man's paranoid jealous obsession with his wife's supposed affairs was going to be represented through wacky op art techniques and daring innovations with colour and form. Filming was halted for months while the Master brooded on images. Tempers frayed, the cast were agonised and eventually the director collapsed with a coronary. Bromberg ­examines this lost footage and his ­assemblage is perhaps more fascinating than the completed work would have been. A must-see.