L'Enfer
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | L'Enfer |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | (not published: 1964 ) |
| Rod | |
| Director | Henri-Georges Clouzot |
| script | Henri-Georges Clouzot |
| camera |
Claude Renoir Andréas Winding Armand Thirard |
| occupation | |
| |
L'Enfer (Eng. "Hell") is an unfinished film project by the French director Henri-Georges Clouzot from 1964 .
action
Marcel, owner of a hotel in Auvergne , is newly married to Odette. Soon after, he becomes a victim of extreme jealousy . He sees his wife Odette at a meeting with the auto mechanic Martineau, a well-known womanizer. Odette initially enjoys Marcel's jealousy as a token of love, while he becomes increasingly lost in his fantasies.
When a hotel guest shows his vacation film one evening, Marcel thinks he recognizes his wife in the love game with Martineau. He goes mad, lets the film stop and slaps Odette. His delusions are rampant and his accusations become increasingly absurd. Finally he murders his wife.
production
Marcel's fantasy world was represented in the film by scenes that were rotated in color, optically distorted, or in surreal colors. Scenes that were supposed to depict the real world were shot in black and white .
The film is set within sight of the Garabit Viaduct on and around the Garabit Hotel on the D 909 on the banks of the Truyère , which in this area is dammed into an artificial lake by the Grandval dam . The hotel also housed the entire team and still exists (as of 2017) under this name, but was renamed to Hôtel du Lac for the film .
For the film with Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani in the lead roles, the famous director was given a free hand by the American producers: the work was to become a cinematic sensation. However, it was not completed because Clouzot not only overshot the shooting schedule, but Reggiani left the production due to illness (and possibly also because of Clouzot's authoritarian behavior on location) and Clouzot suffered a heart attack. Although everyone involved knew from the start that the scheduled shooting time could not be fully used because three weeks after work began to drain the water from the reservoir, Clouzot did not take any measures that would have created more freedom: Neither looked He was looking for alternative locations, nor did he design the filming in such a way that at first more scenes were shot in which the water could be seen, so that the rest of the film could also have been shot with the water level falling. Instead, he wanted u. a. with three complete, top-class camera teams streamline the work so that it could be completed in a short time. In fact, however, he worked on many days without interruption with the team that was starting, while the other two could only wait idly for lack of instructions.
The American donors trusted Clouzot, especially after a short visit to the filming location and after viewing the sample filming material, which was phenomenal at the time, so that they let him act alone on site. It turned out to be problematic that Clouzot had combined three tasks on site with script, direction and production. On the one hand it meant an immense workload and therefore also a psychological burden for him. On the other hand, however, this prevented an exchange between several people who oversee these tasks; instead, under great time pressure, he had to develop all thoughts and make all decisions by himself. The third consequence was that he was so busy during the day that, as the actual main contact person, he was hardly available for meetings or answering questions to the rest of the team.
Aftermath
His prisoner
Clouzot used some of the effects shots that had been tried out for L'Enfer in his last film, His Prisoners , from 1968 , which is counted among his less important works.
The hell
1994 was a remake of Clouzot's unpublished work, directed by Claude Chabrol .
The Hell by Henri-Georges Clouzot
In 2009, Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea present the documentary Die Hölle by Henri-Georges Clouzot , which, in addition to many game scenes stored in the archive, as well as tests for color and visual effects, contained interviews with members of the production staff and re-enacted key scenes.
Web links
- L'Enfer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Documentation The Hell by Henri-Georges Clouzot, France 2009, directed by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea.
- ^ DVD publication of The Hell by Henri-Georges Clouzot at Arthaus, Germany 2009.
- ^ His prisoner in the Lexicon of International Films .