Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)

HEARTBEATS (Les Amours Imaginaires)     A                       

Canada  France  (95 mi)  2010  d:  Xavier Dolan 

When they devised Audience Choice Awards, this is the kind of film they must have had in mind, as this is a brilliantly inventive film, hilarious beyond anyone’s expectations, the most enjoyable film seen in ages, infectiously smart, wonderfully acted, devising the most inventive camera movements, original color schemes, and the absolute best use of music of any film seen in years, sensing the urgency, naivety, complexity and depth of passion of the characters.  The savagely funny Xavier Dolan writes, directs, edits, provides the art direction, and stars in this comedy of observations, where a host of people speak directly to the camera revealing their own personal insight into relationships, what thrills them about being in a relationship, but also how bummed they are when people don’t meet their expectations, which is shown in that ANNIE HALL (1977) rapid fire style, one closeup face after another.  Reminiscent of the colorful and early playful style of Jean-Luc Godard in the early 60’s with Anna Karina, Dolan uses the wacky energy and clever combination of personalities from Truffaut’s delightfully inventive threesome movie, JULES AND JIM (1962), featuring a dazzling display of wit and comic invention.  Dolan himself plays Francis, gorgeous, bright, and gay, whose best friend, the acid tongued Marie (Monia Chokri) is straight, but provides a high fashion statement in every shot, always featuring a kaleidoscope of bright colors, while her stylish approach to smoking cigarettes, including the development of an individual philosophy around cigarette smoking, is unparalleled.  The two of them fall for the same guy, Nicolas (Niels Schneider), a curly haired blond whose pouty lips and effeminate features seem to swing both ways, so they end up in the same bed together—for awhile, where their love theme seems to be Dalida’s multi-lingual version of “Bang Bang.” Dalida - Bang Bang (Les Amours Imaginaires) - YouTube (2:19).  And yes, Dolan loves the use of slo mo and shooting the back of people’s heads.    

There hasn’t been a more candy-colored movie since The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cher... (1964), which, by the way, was devastatingly sad and did not end up happy.  Here the colors really do reflect the internal moods of the characters, which for the most part is youthfully upbeat.  The film is constantly exploring the idea of relationships, where various observations cut into the movie at improbable moments, giving the film a feeling of community, as if everyone commenting is somehow personally involved in the making of this film.  Rarely are characters ever seen alone, as almost always they’re seen in groups vying for one another’s affections, where Francis and Marie grow a bit jealous when someone else has Nicolas’s undivided attention, and then step over themselves with embarrassingly awkward talk when it becomes their turn, where being foolishly in love is certainly demonstrated repeatedly with this threesome, especially as the two friends are in competition with one another, each attempting to have him all to themselves.  Dolan reveals shots from each other’s imagination, perspectives that show substantially different versions of how they envision Nicolas in love.  There’s a hilarious dance sequence where Nicolas is dancing at a party with his mother, Anne Dorval in a marvelously brief appearance, a professional dancer who shows up the next morning with her son’s monthly stipend, where she has occasion to chat with Francis instead, calling him a gorgeously attractive “twinkie,” recalling how she used to bring her young son to dance sessions and all the other dancers would fall over themselves to swarm him with kisses and adoring affection, so affection is something that he’s used to.  Despite their best efforts, which includes a trip to the country where Nicolas describes for Francis the proper technique of eating a roasted marshmallow, neither one seems capable of holding his attention for long.     

When they inevitably both get dumped, Nicolas is as cold and cruel as they get, where the theme music changes to Fever Ray’s hauntingly atmospheric “Keep the Streets Empty for Me” Les Amours Imaginaires - YouTube (3:26, unsubtitled).  The color sequences grow darker and more somber and the mood of introspection is more prevalent.  Dolan uses slow motion sequences, where especially effective is a pulsating strobe light segment that shows faces in closeup, including a subtle changing look of the eyes, a technique that was memorable in FLASHDANCE (1983) but may have had its roots in Clouzot's ill-fated yet dizzily experimental L'ENFER (1964), which was never completed.  Much of the film’s appeal is the way the actors relish their roles, especially Monia Chokri who seems to wrap her tongue around some of the dialogue, exuding a witty sarcasm through invented pronunciations.  She’s incredibly smart, but she also sticks her foot in her mouth when she gets nervous.  Chokri and Dolan are two of the more delightful characters seen onscreen in awhile, and the screenplay gives them a full range of expression while Dolan behind the camera seems to be experimenting with a kind of ecstatic, uninhibited glee.  The stylishly impressionistic mood of comic originality continues unabated throughout the entire film, where the energy never sags, and where the finale is drop dead hilarious.  While Dolan’s initial film is more personal and is perhaps the more audaciously accomplished effort, rarer still is one lured into an intelligently written comedy that offers both funny and heartbreakingly meaningful drama, from the superficiality of hip clubs to the despair of self-deception, where this is a free-spirited take on the absence and exuberance of love that is given enormous energy and appeal from both the writer and the performers.  While Dolan will appeal primarily to the gay community, because his wit and humor reflect themes of gay tolerance and love, but it should be noted that Dolan may be the only filmmaker on the planet who can make a straight person identify with an appreciation for being gay, and not in any tragic sense, like MILK (2008) or BOYS DON’T CRY (1999), but in the euphoric brilliance of his art. 

Vertigo

VERTIGO                   A                    

USA  (128 mi)  1958   restored version in 1996 (129 mi)

Man does not yield himself to the angels, nor to death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

—“Ligeia,” epigraph, by Edgar Allen Poe, 1838

Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can take possession of a living being?      —Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore)

VERTIGO is the midway point of the Hitchcock voyeur trilogy, beginning with REAR WINDOW (1954) and concluding with Psycho (1960), all films that deal with heightened personal obsessions that lead from being a curious snoop and a neighborhood nuisance to sheer madness.  As films that reveal the most insight into the director himself, these movies are invaluable, becoming case studies of the man behind the camera.  What makes the film so unique is how deeply personal it is, yet simplistic, mainly consisting of only three characters, where for the first time in a man’s life he’s fallen deeply in love, but it turns into a Surrealist, nightmarish obsession.  Despite its elevated status, voted by critics in the latest 2012 BFI Sight & Sound once-a-decade poll Sight & Sound 2012 Polls | BFI | British Film Institute as the #1 film of all time, finally overtaking CITIZEN CANE (1941), the first time since 1962, VERTIGO is not nearly as entertaining as the other two films in the trilogy and is one of the more downbeat and slowly developing of all Hitchcock films.  Coming directly after The Wrong Man (1956), it would be hard to find two back-to-back commercial films from any major American director that end on such a grim note, and it was not a box office or critical success upon release, but its reputation has only grown.  VERTIGO is a sophisticated suspense thriller, a thinking man’s movie, the kind Hitchcock built his reputation upon and the kind critic’s admire.  At heart a ghost story, the story concerns a woman who is inhabited by the ghost of an ancestor, who wanders the streets and can’t remember where she’s been, who may be a danger to herself as the ghost committed suicide at the same age.  It doesn’t hurt that the lady is easy on the eyes, Madeleine (an icy blond Kim Novak), the wife of an old college friend of Scottie (James Stewart), an ex policeman recently retired from the force, where we learn why just after the exquisite Saul Bass opening credit sequence.  Chasing an escaping criminal across the barely lit rooftops of San Francisco, Scottie clings to a gutter, otherwise dangling from a high rise building, while his partner falls to his death trying to help him.  Like a cliffhanger sequence shown in weekly serials, Hitchcock never explains how he managed to get down safely, but the scene moves effortlessly back to normality in the next scene.  Scottie feels the man’s death is his fault and suffers vertigo symptoms ever since.  His recovery under the tutelage of friend and confidante Midge (screenwriter Samuel Taylor’s invention, as she was not in the novel), a comforting and bespectacled Barbara Bel Geddes, an artist who still carries the torch for him but is too shy to show it, couldn’t be more banal, as Scottie is obviously bored stiff, too caught up in his own self-pity, where he can barely keep his mind on the conversation.  His friend Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) asks Scottie to tail his wife, believing some harm could come to her, as she doesn’t seem herself these days.  Scottie initially has little interest, but once he sees Madeleine, showcased by Hitchcock in a stunning entrance, he’s hooked. 

Hitchcock uses his experience from Silent era films, as a good opening portion of the movie is almost entirely wordless, where Scottie passively tails Madeleine, always seen as remote and distant, cast in an air of mystery, yet alluringly beautiful, using fog filters for a dreamlike effect, seen as a walking ghost as she visits various sights around San Francisco, Ernie’s restaurant, Podesta’s flowershop, Mission Dolores, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Palace of Fine Arts, Coit Tower, and Fort Point with dazzling views of the Golden Gate Bridge, becoming a veritable travelogue of one of America’s most photogenic cities, shown in glorious Technicolor on perfectly sunny days where there’s not a cloud in the sky.  Shot by Robert Burks, the clarity of colors is unusually clean, especially with recently restored prints, including 70 mm screenings.  For decades, VERTIGO was impossible to see, one of The Five Lost Hitchcocks where their rights were bought back by the director and willed to his daughter, kept out of circulation for more than 25 years.  Unfortunately, as they were stored privately in less than ideal storage facilities, these films required extensive restoration work by film historians Robert Harris and James Katz, but except for a few smudged moments, the prints are pristine.  This is also one of Bernard Hermann’s most gorgeous musical works, a hypnotic, intensely romantic score using classical Wagnerian themes reminiscent of Tristan und Isolde, a bold, widely expansive, dreamlike love that is induced by a love potion in the opera, creating the magical illusion of love, especially the Liebestod, which has ominous love-death implications, where Madeleine similarly appears to be sleepwalking her way through her various wanderings, as if in a dream, especially since she can’t recall where she’s been.  When she throws herself into the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay, she becomes George Bailey, the James Stewart role in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), while Stewart himself takes on the role of Clarence, her guardian angel, gallantly rescuing her and warming her up afterwards by the fire in his nearby apartment.  This casual acquaintance suddenly turns into something more, becoming lovers despite knowing she’s married to one of his best friends, but Scottie can’t resist, wanting to be with her all the time, obsessed by the illusion of love where women are an unattainable ideal, existing only in the form of wish fulfillment, where they take trips together into the nearby old growth forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz, or the panoramic vista of Cypress Point at Pebble Beach, where their first kiss is accentuated by thunderous crashing of waves, or head south down the coast to the Mission of San Juan Batista (where there is no tower, it was painted into the scene), which plays such a prominent role in the film, as it’s a place she describes to him in her dreams.  But when he brings her there, thinking everything will magically blossom into love, hoping to make the illusion come real, she fatalistically throws herself off the bell tower to her death, where Scottie is mortified, helpless to save her from his vertigo which prevents him from reaching the top of the tower.  This comes as a shock to the audience, as she’s been the focus of nearly the entire opening half of the movie, where there’s likely been a growing connection established, and suddenly she’s gone.   

Adapted from the French novel D’Entre les morts (From Among the Dead), written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the same duo that wrote Diabolique (Les Diaboliques), where Hitchcock had expressed an interest in obtaining the rights to the book, so the writers for all practical purposes had Hitchcock in mind when they wrote the book.  Storywise, VERTIGO harkens back to Fritz Lang’s 1921 film DESTINY (Der Müde Tod), an expressionist fairytale where a woman whose lover has died enters the Kingdom of Death to plead for his life, only to relive her loss in three successive reincarnations.  Madeleine’s death, replicating the suicide of the ghost that haunted her, is only the first half of the film, where Scottie’s name is cleared from being implicated in her murder, but the coroner (Henry Jones) lays it on pretty thick about how outrageously convenient it is that he suffers from vertigo, as had he not had this condition Madeleine would likely still be alive today.  This sends Scottie into a catatonic state, suffering from his own nightmares, blaming himself for her death, reliving the experience over and over again, where nothing seems to clear his head from this horrendous nightmare.  Following the experience of intently watching a mysterious woman, the film shifts its focus of attention onto Scottie himself, where its his interior world that seems to matter.  At some point later, he’s back on his feet, where he sees visions of Madeleine everywhere, as if the ghosts are calling out for him, returning to all the familiar places, but he’s only frustrated, until by chance, he sees someone walking down the street who bears a strange resemblance, following her to her hotel where he attempts to meet her.  Though she’s a brunette and talks differently, Kim Novak also plays Judy Barton, much more forward, more carnal, proudly wearing no brassiere, supposedly a working class girl from Kansas.  But all Scottie sees is Madeleine, becoming infatuated with every detail of Judy’s life, again wanting to spend every waking minute with her.  At first reluctant, finding his advances somewhat clumsy and old school, she eventually capitulates, where in flashback we realize the truth, a daring device revealed only to the audience, shown very matter of factly, but she keeps it from Scottie as their relationship progresses.  Instead of the love she hoped for, Scottie grows impatiently overcontrolling, obsessively convinced she’d look better if dressed the way he insists, or wore her hair the same as Madeleine, demanding that she transform herself into the dead woman he still loves and dreams about.  The fanaticism displayed by Stewart is discomfiting, a startling demeanor from a guy perceived as predictably comfortable and safe, a kind of normal everyman, now veering towards the panicked anxiety of Norman Bates in Psycho.  This obsessive compulsion, however, perfectly describes the Hitchcock blonde, the inclination of the director to transform all his leading ladies into cool and sophisticated, icy blonds, such as Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedron, and a dozen more, perhaps going all the way back to Anny Ondra in Blackmail (1929), (Hitchcock's earliest blonde: Anny Ondra « Feminéma).  What’s especially creepy is seeing how Scottie’s compulsion to mold a woman into what he wants is so prevalent in the movie industry and our consumer oriented society, where magazine covers, music videos, and scantily clad female performers all sell some pre-conceived idea of what men supposedly want to see, such as the most recent Super Bowl halftime show Beyoncé’s Super Bowl Style With Destiny’s Child: Total Touchdown.    

What Hitchcock does with shifting camera angles and expressionist color schemes in the second half of the film is near delirious, especially his use of the color green from the neon sign outside Judy’s hotel window, never more sensuous and seductive, but also deadly, even going animated, perhaps second only to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s INFERNO (L’Enfer) (2009), recently reconstructed by directors Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea from 13 hours of unfinished footage shot by Clouzot in 1964, showing manic hysteria through kinetic energy with lights pulsating on and off continually altering the experimental 60’s look of the screen.  Hitchcock’s vertigo shots are also tantalizingly risqué, where stairways in Scottie’s eyes have an additional form of constant movement, where looking down he only sees instability, with stairs advancing and receding at once, creating a shape-shifting state of imbalance.  What’s also interesting is the exaggerated state of dark humor used by Hitchcock, where Scottie goes so far off the rails that an audience is amused by the razor-sharp focus of detail.  After an afternoon shopping in an exclusively upscale women’s store in an attempt to replicate the exact outfits of Madeleine, Judy has grown exasperated, literally pleading with Scottie, “Couldn't you like me, just me, the way I am?”  Rather than an embrace of reciprocated love, Scottie instead remains transfixed at what’s missing in this complete transformation, “The color of your hair!”  Scottie then leaps at the opportunity, completely oblivious of how it makes her feel, blind to the degrading humiliation, and completes the conversion from a lowly brunette sales clerk to a sensuous ice goddess, where in a Hitchcock film sexuality exists only as an obsession, one that degrades women and deranges the minds of men.  Stewart develops a mania by the end of the picture that rivals his state of frenzy in Anthony Mann westerns, like Winchester '73 (1950), the first time anyone had seen this maniacal side to the otherwise calm and gentlemanly nature of his character.  In VERTIGO, the relentless obsession only grows more feverish, where it would be hard for anyone not to break under such intense scrutiny.  A film of intense personal devastation and lost love, existing in what amounts to a state of illusion, where Scottie desperately tries to remake Judy in Madeleine’s image while Judy just as desperately hopes Scottie will fall in love with her for who she is, and not some dead ghost from the past.  In Hitchcock films, the darker side always wins out, where the dead rise from their graves and wreak havoc on the living. 

It should be pointed out that film essayist Chris Marker explores this film in greater detail in his own work Sans Soleil (1983), a film that questions the role of time and memory in shaping our ideas of history and the past.  He includes striking footage from the film, perhaps drawn to the material because, very much like his own observant work, it’s a film about watching, where seen from Scottie’s viewpoint, the audience is also drawn into the developing fixation on unraveling the mysteries of the film.  According to Marker, “the vertigo the film deals with isn’t to do with space and falling; it is a clear, understandable and spectacular metaphor for yet another kind of vertigo, much more difficult to represent—the vertigo of time.”  Madeleine’s character unleashes a flood of memories and suppressed emotion, where both Scottie and Madeleine are already haunted by ghosts of the past before they meet, becoming more combustible when they grow close, as if combining their haunted pasts provides an incendiary effect, where memory has a way of resurrecting itself.  Sans Soleil is a film about the impossibility of memory to be truly accurate, conjuring up excerpts from T.S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday Poetry X » Poetry Archives » T. S. Eliot » "Ash Wednesday":

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual only for one time

And only for one place

Eliot’s poem is a struggle between the worlds of time and that of the eternal, as moments take place in a singular space, never to be repeated.  Similarly, time will never be recreated, where like the dizzying effects of vertigo, the closer one seemingly gets to it, the farther it moves away in a pulley-like push-pull effect.  Marker is particularly fascinated by the San Francisco travelogue aspect of VERTIGO, as he uses a similar technique in Sans Soleil, where the mysteries explored are contrasting cultures and images through excerpts of documentary footage, or fragments of the past.  Marker draws upon history much like film characters rely upon their own memories.  For example, Marker revisits many of the locations used by Hitchcock in the film, splicing in the actual VERTIGO footage with his own pilgrimage, offering his own observations of both the present and how he remembers the past, recalling his experiences of initially viewing the film in a theater, while the audience will bring their own recollections of the film to Marker’s comments, producing an echo effect, where film is used to create a unique blending of memory.  A perfect example Hitchcock creates is the moment when Judy walks into the bathroom but comes out as Madeleine, as if resurrecting a ghost, yet this is the woman Scottie yearns for, where past and present, illusion and reality, finally merge.  Time and again Hitchcock shows us images reflected by mirrors, suggesting only one is real, while the other is a reflected illusion, an idealized substitute, suggesting memories are interior mirrors that have a life of their own, where illusion and reality are often indistinguishable, altering and reshaping themselves as we grow, producing reverberating emotions even as we try to understand their powerful effects upon us.  It should also be pointed out that the opening shot is a close up of the human face, seen as a mask that one wears, and as the eyes dart back and forth, it is suggestive that one never knows what goes on inside the mind of a person, where the title actually comes swirling out of a close-up of an eyeball, suggesting we are all uniquely different, as the subjective nature of the film then goes on to prove, where Hitchcock is concerned with our deepest impulses, with what defines us as human, providing a window into a darkly disturbing vision of the world.    

Note – Hitchcock’s personal appearance comes at about the 11-minute mark walking across the foreground at the shipping yards as Scottie is about to meet with Elster. 

Diabolique (Les Diaboliques)

DIABOLIQUE (Les Diaboliques)         B+ 
France  (116 mi)  1955  d:  Henri-Georges Clouzot 

You can lead a corpse to water but you can’t make it sink.   —Newsweek magazine review 

Made immediately following Clouzot’s  The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) (1953), both are suspenseful dramas that take a long time getting started, paying plenty of attention setting the scene, introducing the characters, and establishing the various conflicts between the characters.  Actually this film is a throwback to earlier eras, where the stylistic use of shadows and darkness prevent the audience from seeing too much during suspenseful moments, where it’s often unclear what’s happening onscreen until it’s finally sprung upon you at the last moment.  Reminiscent of Val Lewton productions and Jacques Tourneur’s CAT PEOPLE (1942), where the thrill of the picture is the director’s ability to maximize the power of suggestion through shadows and offscreen sound, also the swooning female leads of Cukor’s GASLIGHT (1944), Hitchcock’s own Suspicion (1941), or Polanski’s Rosemary's Baby (1968), where the director delights in tormenting his lead character, often indistinguishable whether it’s real or imagined.  Adapting a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the writing team used by Hitchcock in Vertigo (1958), where Clouzot barely beat Hitchcock in obtaining the rights for this film, supposedly by only a matter of hours, something that apparently irritated Hitchcock, where Psycho (1960) was his jealous attempt to outdo Clouzot, a contemporary of Hitchcock, actually known as the French Hitchcock, whose work was a rival to the Master of Suspense.  DIABOLIQUE with its terrifyingly strange plot twists was a huge box office success, where both utilize famous bathroom scenes.  Both directors were known for their meticulous preparation before shooting, where they knew how it was going to look, storyboarding all their scenes, where the film was largely finished before they ever stepped onto the set.  Hitchcock was so confident of what he already captured on film that watching the daily shoots never interested him.  Clouzot had a different approach to actors, as his wife Véra Clouzot was often his lead, but the intensity and borderline obsession with perfection in filmmaking is something they both share.  Hitchcock relishes wit and humor in his sophisticated thrillers, while Clouzot’s movies are decidedly more bleak and downbeat, but both share a love for the dark and macabre, where ordinary people can be compelled by circumstances to commit despicable acts.       

Set in a small, rundown, private boy’s school owned by Christina (Véra Clouzot), her husband and school headmaster Michel (Paul Meurisse) is abusive and bullying, the kind of mean-spirited and dominating villain that deserves his comeuppance, where Christina is often seen cowering in fear, where one of the other teachers, Nicole, Simone Signoret providing the real backbone, is often seen coming to her side.  Certainly in the tradition of Suspicion, Christina has one of the weakest constitutions of any lead character in the movies, where it’s suggested she’s a former Catholic nun, continually sick and bedridden, complaining of a weak heart, but anyone with a relentlessly vile husband like Michel would have one hell of a migraine headache to deal with all the time.  Apparently, through gossip heard by people working on the grounds, Nicole is also Michel’s mistress, opening the film sporting a black eye. Their affair seems to have gone cold, however, as the two women are often seen commiserating with one another, wondering what they can do about Michel.  While the origin remains a mystery, by the time the audience finds out about it the two have already hatched a plan to do away with the poor bastard, drugging him before drowning him in a bathtub.  Despite Christina’s continual second thoughts, forever beleaguered by every possible outcome gone wrong, perhaps just wishing Nicole would go ahead and get it over with.  But Nicole’s no fool, as she’s much more steady and level-headed than the ever flighty Christina.  The two go back and forth, like arguing teenagers, but finally decide they have to do it over the school’s brief holiday.  No one deserves it more, from the audience’s point of view, where the spectators become willing accomplices to the final grisly act, where it’s not so easy to lug around a dead body and then try to get rid of the evidence, as they do by dumping him in the school’s murky swimming pool which is already a cesspool of filth.  All they can do is return to normal and let someone else discover the missing body, but of course nothing is that easy, as they eventually concoct a plan to have the pool drained but the body is mysteriously missing.  

The two women have held it all together so far, but soon become unraveled by the inexplicable turn of events, driven to near madness by the ever changing circumstances that suggest it’s possible he’s not dead.  One of the kids reports he’s seen him, and is punished dearly for this outburst, as once Michel’s been reported missing, there’s been no other sign of him.  But strange clues start popping up that suggest he may be vowing revenge, but every one turns out empty, especially a missing body dropped in the Seine that matches his description.  Christina’s interest in the dead body attracts the interest of a retired police inspector, Charles Vanel, a pestering, old-fashioned character who always seems to be snooping around, likeable and charming, overly polite and sweetly sympathetic, where his tireless pursuit of following every clue is the likely origin of Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo character, one of the more popular police detectives in American television (1971 – 2003).  The two women are literally driven up a wall, where they unravel before each other as they simply can’t bear the suspense, feeling guilty about what they’ve done, driven to near confession, where each will implicate the other.  Clouzot has a tendency to string along the characters for as long as possible, slowly enveloping them in a web of lies and deceit, where especially with Christina, she always seems on the edge of a mental breakdown, where the shadows surrounding her grow larger, consumed by her ever building guilt and paranoia.  Clouzot goes to great lengths to surround her with less and less light, until eventually she’s literally fumbling around in the darkness, unable to distinguish between what’s real or imagined, growing dizzy from the ideas swimming around in her head.  Simultaneously, Clouzot elevates the irritating use of sound, where creaky doors open, water is dripping, and the sounds of footsteps can be heard, all adding to a growing sense of panic in the air that creates a sense of hysteria.  From the outset, that foul stagnant water in the pool is a symbol of lingering trouble, the kind that can’t be washed away, where long afterwards it will be hard to shake the effects of this movie, where like Hitchcock, Clouzot delights in terrorizing the audience.