Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 28, 2018

Since the film in question was reportedly named after the legendary tome in Dante's not all that funny Divine Comedy (yes, that's a joke), it might have been more appropriate in a way had this release been titled Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Purgatory. That's because the 1964 film L’Enfer (Inferno) at the center of this kind of combo reconstruction and documentary has been lost in a bizarre limbo for decades, after a calamitous and brief shoot that saw several of the crew falling ill, others perhaps giving way to various neuroses, and Clouzot himself suffering a near fatal heart attack, an event which (not to pun too horribly) pounded the final nail in this particular cinematic coffin. Clouzot’s filmography is rather surprisingly sparse considering his reputation, especially with regard to projects initiated in the sixties, several years after what is arguably still Clouzot’s best remembered film on this side of the pond, the Hitchcockian thriller Diabolique. (Some fans might give that “remembrance” honor to the film Clouzot made right before Diabolique, The Wages of Fear.) Inferno was planned to be another trip through familiar Clouzot territory, with an unraveling marriage and psychological angst in droves. Clouzot may have referenced Dante in his proposed title for his ultimately abandoned film, but in terms of character names, he went decidedly Gallic, lifting two monikers from another landmark piece in world literature, Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Odette (Romy Schneider) and Marcel (Serge Reggiani) are married, but Marcel has begun to suspect Odette is not being faithful to him. The film was planned to explore Marcel’s mental deterioration in a way that kind of oddly presages other works that purport to give a “first person” depiction of burgeoning madness, perhaps at least somewhat like Requiem for a Dream. In that regard, Clouzot opted for a stylistic artifice, with the “real life” elements being filmed in black and white and Marcel’s “interior world” bursting with almost hallucinogenic color. Inferno would have been a rather remarkable departure in style if not content from prior Clouzot works, and it so excited the bean counters at Columbia Pictures (which was funding the project), that they pretty much just threw untold piles of cash at Clouzot, to the point that he had three separate crews numbering around 150 people supposedly filming simultaneously, though as one of the supplementary features on this Blu-ray discusses, that “supposedly” didn’t ever really materialize due to logistical issues.

The reference to Requiem for a Dream might actually be appropriate in a different way, since part of what makes Inferno so fascinating was Clouzot’s experimentation with various filming techniques through which he sought to recreate psychedelic experiences which had begun to interest him. Therefore, there are a ton of weirdly hypnotic color tests as well as more or less completed footage where Clouzot was tooling around with color wheels that would rotate and give his imagery a kind of swirling, pulsating ambience that is really unusual and almost spooky at times. This, coupled with other, ostensibly more “mundane”, stylistic approaches like coating his female performers’ lips with bright blue lipstick gives the color elements of Inferno a really distinctive appearance.

As a reconstruction, this effort is understandably a bit roughshod, since Clouzot left huge swaths of his screenplay unfinished, and what is presented here from the original shoot has no soundtrack. The snippets from the original shoot are used almost as interstitials here in any case, frequently interrupted by longer talking head sequences which seek to elucidate the production. Berenice Bejo and Jacques Gamblin are on hand to perform some of this unfilmed material, which helps to fill in gaps even as it obviously creates an unavoidably disjunctive mood with the material featuring Schneider and Reggiani from the initial shoot. As a documentary, though, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno is a fascinating trip down a very peculiar rabbit hole, one filled with obsessive behaviors (not the least of which was Clouzot himself) and the kind of profligacy that is typically more associated with Hollywood than the European film industry.

Serge Bromberg recounts an apparently chance meeting he had with Clouzot’s widow in a stuck elevator, one that lasted so long Mrs. Clouzot was able to regale Bromberg with all sorts of tales from her late husband’s career, including his ultimately disastrous attempt to make L’Enfer. That piqued Bromberg’s interest, and the result was the discovery of a cache of around thirteen hours of film, which is utilized here (as well as the main supporting featurette offered as a supplement). The completed footage is absolutely fascinating to view, even if it doesn’t make a whale of a lot of “sense”, and it clearly shows that Clouzot was intentionally trying to push his stylistic envelope into new and unexplored arenas.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Academy with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (some archival material hovers closer to Academy Ratio). Arrow really doesn't provide much technical data on the transfer in their insert booklet, offering only that M2K Films delivered a high definition master to them. I don't notice any huge differences between this release and the Flicker Alley release Svet reviewed for us several years ago. As Svet mentioned in his review, there are understandable variances in some of the archival footage, with some snippets looking pretty darned nice, and others showing clear signs of age related wear and tear. The color footage is rather evocative almost all the time, with really nicely morphing tones courtesy of the ever changing color wheels Clouzot utilized. The only thing I'll mention in passing are some kind of curious looking anomalies that tend to pop up in both the archival and contemporary interview sequences in darker areas. Look, for example, at the panels in screenshot 7 or the baby carriage in screenshot 11. These are arguably slightly more visible than they were in the Flicker Alley release (see screenshot 14 of Svet's review and you'll see them on the panels there in that version as well). It's not anything overly problematic, but it did catch my eye a couple of times.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

This new Arrow release tops the previous Flicker Alley release by offering two lossless tracks, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix and an LPCM 2.0 mix. That said, this is not a sonic wonderland by any stretch of the imagination, and there's really not even that huge of a difference between the surround and stereo tracks other than occasional ambient noises added to some of the silent footage or (more consistently) the unusual and rather effective score by Bruno Alexiu. The bulk of the documentary is simply people talking, and either of these tracks support that element extremely well.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Lucy Mazdon on Henri-Georges Clouzot and Inferno (1080p; 21:48) is an excellent overview of Clouzot and this doomed production conducted by critic Mazdon.


• Introduction by Serge Bromberg (1080i; 8:57) features the documentary's director offering some fun comments. In French with English subtitles.


• They Saw Inferno (1080p; 59:43) is a riveting adjunct to the main feature, offering a glut of interviews with various people associated with the production, and presenting quite a bit more production data, as well as some unseen footage from Clouzot's shoot.


• Interview with Serge Bromberg (1080p; 18:09)


• Original Trailer (1080p; 1:44)


• Stills Gallery (1080p)

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's always a kind of curiously morbid fascination with lost film projects, and Inferno is certainly no different in that regard. There are a ton of totally interesting interviews in this piece, but it's the Clouzot footage that really tends to impress, especially for those who are acquainted with some of the director's other, arguably less psychedelic, films. Arrow has once again assembled a handsome package with solid technical merits and excellent supplements. Highly recommended.