Living up to its devilish title, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s extraordinary Les Diaboliques (US: Diabolique) presents the viewer with three characters engaged in various degrees of evil, and we won’t know the extent of each until the final scene. This omnipresence of moral degradation, combined with near perfect pacing, makes for two hours of rising stakes and mounting tension culminating in a final sequence of almost horror genre impact. Véra Clouzot, Brazilian-born wife of the director who died only a few years after this film’s release, plays Christina Delassalle, a wealthy, child-like heiress with a Catholic faith and a weak heart (“…she’s a cute little ruin. She doesn’t risk anything, ruins are indestructible”) who pays for the private boys’ school run by her execrable husband whom she conspires to murder. Paul Meurisse plays her cruel, abusive husband Michel, who pelts her with both fists and words (“Die, my sweet; die quickly…I’ll feel much better”) while carrying on an affair with another teacher right under her nose. Simone Signoret plays the other teacher, Nicole Horner, who has managed to maintain a close, protective friendship with Christina despite sleeping with her husband. Tired of Michel’s abuse, the two women enact a meticulously planned murder plot and successfully hide the body, but a wave of terror crashes when the corpse disappears. From the introductory music over the opening titles, in which angry cellos and organs fight with the singing voices of children, Clouzot signals the subversiveness of what’s to come. Thirard’s camera captures Clouzot’s meticulous compositions, the beauty of the director’s craft a perfect contrast to the ugliness of his characters.