Perfect cast and a good story

one of my absolute favorites!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

The list of movies that have been lost over the years is larger than one would expect. Many were lost in fires on the backlots of Hollywood, the incredibly flammable material used to make them making them easy prey to those fires. Some have been lost to time, deteriorating in what is termed vinegar syndrome due to the fact when film canisters are opened containing these films they smell like vinegar, their images gone for eternity. Others are just never found. It is this sort of film that makes up this film.Directed and written by Serge Bromberg it is the tale of a film that began shooting in 1964 led by famed director Henri-Georges Clouzot. American audiences will know his work mainly from two films, DIABOLIQUE in which two women murder one's husband by drowning him in a bathtub and THE WAGES OF FEAR the story of a group of down on their luck men willing to transport nitroglycerine across treacherous roads in South America, later remade by William Friedkin as SORCERER.Bromberg opens the film (as well as discussing it a bit more in depth in one of the extras included on the Arrow release) by talking about his conversation with Clouzot's widow and how he convinced her to allow him to tell the story of the film that never was. While she'd been asked before she was convinced to allow him to do so.Due to his previous successes Clouzot was given the go ahead by Columbia Pictures to shoot the film he dreamed of, INFERNO. The story itself revolves around a French hotelier Marcel (Serge Reggiani), his attractive wife Odette (Romy Schneider) and his obsessive jealousy towards his wife. While it might sound simple enough the plans Clouzot had for it were far from it.Rather than start filming right away Clouzot spent a number of weeks working with the technical crew to create a new film style unseen or used prior to this film. A combination of colors, light, lenses and prismatic effects were played with and viewed building up an arsenal from which he would create his film. Hours and film were used for the express purpose of seeing what could be accomplished on film. The end results are amazing and interesting to watch, accomplishing things that could easily be done now with effects and computers. But the time here is 1963 and these weren't invented yet. To see what he achieved is a thrill to behold for film fans.Weeks were spent doing these test shots. In addition to that Clouzot attempted to plan out what he intended to shoot in minute detail. Storyboards were drawn and deeply intricate directions were listed on diagrams and scripts to be used, providing them with a battle plan that should have resulted in time saved and a well-timed shoot.Good fortune smiled on him with the perfect location to shoot the film. The only problem was that the lake was to be drained to provide power nearby within weeks and the shoot had to be finished by then. The planning should have allowed this to happen. But then Clouzot's own obsession took hold. Shoots and reshoots, other obstacle placed in his way and crews that were left confused by his direction moved the production behind schedule. Eventually occurrences took place that resulted in the film never being finished.But that doesn't mean that the footage shot in the weeks prior to actual filming as well as the footage that was filmed before production shut down were gone. Bromberg has formed the story of what happened into an interesting film, combining that footage with interviews of the crew members that remain as well as certain sequences filmed with stand-ins for the main actors. The end result is a combination of a look at what could have been as well as a lesson in what not to do if you plan on creating a film.All of this makes for an interesting film. But more than that the images captured with that test footage offer a feast for the eyes showing some brilliantly shot images that make you wish the film had been completed. Shot mostly in black and white, the dream sequences, moments where we are placed inside the head of Marcel and in his madness induced jealousy, are shot in color. While the black and white test footage is impressive the color moments are imaginative and beautiful.Arrow Video has released this film in a beautiful hi definition blu-ray format. The extras here show why Arrow is one of the best companies around. They include French cinema expert Lucy Mazdon discussing at length the films of Clouzot and the problems behind INFERNO, "They Saw Inferno" a featurette with unseen material and further insight into the making of the original film, as mentioned earlier an introduction with director/writer Serge Bromberg, an interview with Bromberg, a stills gallery, the original trailer, a reversible sleeve with artwork by Twins of Evil and for the first pressing only an illustrated collector's booklet with writing on the film by Ginette Vincendeau.Arrow has outdone themselves on this one and lovers of French cinema and the films of Clouzot will want to add this one to their collections. If you love movies then this is one to take a look at, seeing not just what was shot but the descent into potential madness that befell the director shooting a film about a man's descent into madness. The end result is a dazzling documentary that delights the senses and is worth watching.

This is not legend ,this is fact:HG Clouzot was one of the most important French directors of all time .He is the sole Frenchie who enjoys two movies in the IMDb top 250 and that means something for someone who worked before (and a bit) beyond the N.V.The New Wave was one of the reason why HG Clouzot tackled a work which finally almost killed him.He was trashed by the Young Turks and he wanted to prove them that he too was able to produce creative innovative movies.Actually he had nothing to prove for,although he made only eleven movies and a half ,all of those movies (but one :"Miquette Et Sa Mère" ) were stunning achievements ."Manon" ,for instance,was anything but conventional or academic,transferring a novel from the eighteenth century to the Liberation in 1944."Les Espions" was so ahead of its time nobody in France understood it when it was released .His overlooked short from "Retour A La Vie" predated such works as "death and the maiden" by forty years .And I do not even mention his well-known -and sometimes more praised abroad than in his native country- "Corbeau" "Diaboliques "and "Salaire De La Peur" ,all classics everywhere.The Nouvelle Vague could do nothing but put this genius down ;he represented all that they hated : elaborate screenplays,tyrannical actors direction(Serge Reggiani ,who,however ,had worked with "La Clouze" in "Manon" (1949)called it a day after some exhausting weeks and was replaced by Trintignant who reportedly did not do anything), skillful treatment of pictures :like Hitchcock ,he intensively used storyboards (with incredible results:"Reggiani under the bridge" has something downright disturbing) "L'Enfer" ,which was to be the follow-up to "la Vérité" ,was intended as something new ,at least in its form ,for as a voice over tells us ,the story is trite :jealousy is a hackneyed subject which had been treated many times ,notably brilliantly by Luis Bunuel ("El").Reality would be filmed in austere black and white -all Clouzot's movies but two are in B&W- whereas phantasms would be given the color treatment ;although the story was filmed on location in Auvergne ,the pictures were to be re-worked in the studio .And some of them are particularly impressive .Romy Schneider was perhaps never filmed as she was in this movie,in scenes which were risqué for 1963 :tied naked to the rails while a train is a coming,fooling around (in her husband's mind) with all the men around and even her best friend (Dany Carrel) -homosexuality was not a new subject for HGC :there was a lesbian in "Quai Des Orfèvres" (1947)."L'Enfer" became really "L'Enfer" .HGC 's ambitions were finally too much for him (and his actors;HGC was not a nice director to be directed by:in her memoirs "La Nostalgie N'Est Plus Ce Qu'Elle Etait " ,Simone Signoret wrote "I had a rough time of it " about "Les Diaboliques" ) and he gave up.Some of the innovations were used in the follow-up "La Prisonnière " (which was his final work in 1968) particularly in the scenes in Laurent Terzieff's apartment and in Elisabeth Wiener's psychedelic visions (not unlike those of Keir Dullea in "2001").It was 1994 before Claude Chabrol made a movie based on HGC's screenplay.Of course his work was not what Clouzot intended to do (how could it?)but it was faithful to its spirit and generally looked upon as one of Chabrol's finest achievements.Like this? try this....."Carnet De Naufrage" ,a documentary depicting the movie "La Fleur De L'Age "(1947).Marcel Carné was never able to see it through.Intended to be the follow up to "Les Portes De La Nuit" ,it was never finished and put an end to the Carné/Prévert collaboration.

This, apparently, is a film where you gain prestige by saying you like it, thereby associating yourself with the great insane folk of the past, always a sure way to build cred. In my view, if someone has to tell you that someone is (or was) great, they probably don't know what they are talking about. If your greatness is limited to a time or place, you're not great. Sorry, but that's the way it is.In this case, the emperor has no clothes.Half of the audience I saw this with could not bear to sit through it to the end, and like Serge and Jean-Louis, they simply walked out. If that was the desired effect, then the filmmakers did great -- at failing.This film didn't know whether it wanted to tell the story IN the film, or the story OF the film, so it tried to do both, thus failing at both. You've got footage mixed in with experiment mixed in with interviews mixed in with acting, and then there's a soundtrack which we're told didn't exist.What I liked most about the film was the experimental footage, but even that got old rather quickly. There's only so long a person can be dazzled by the idea of rotating a light about someone's face in different colours. We get it already. To be fair, there are a number of other quite interesting shots, including for some reason a sea of noses, and a sparkly cellophane strangulation.I do hope to one day see the 1994 L'enfer, which was adapted from the 1964 failure. It currently has a 7.0 score on IMDb, so I hope it will be time well spent.

'L'Enfer d'Henri Georges Clouzot' is one of those documentaries, like Fulton and Pepe's 'Lost in La Mancha,' about a movie that never got finished. This one concerns a film of 1964. Not a suspense thriller like the director's famous 'Wages of Fear' (1953) or 'Diabolique' (1955), which gained him art-house notoriety in the States and made him seem a French competitor of Hitchcock, or his earlier detective meller masterpiece 'Quai des Orfevres' (1947), 'Inferno' ('L'Enfer') was a psychological study of jealousy, with Serge Reggiani as stricken husband Marcel and the young, but already stellar, Romi Schneider as his too-pretty, flirtatious wife, Odette (references to Proust?). But things got too complicated and the movie never happened.In 1994, Claude Chabrol did his film of 'Inferno,' having purchased the script from Clouzot's widow, Inez. In both cases, the essence of the tale is that the hotel owner's suspicions lead to paranoid delusions that overpower him. But Chabrol represents one of the primary Cahiers du Cinema branch of the French Nouvelle Vague, which was at its peak during the period of Clouzot's ascendancy, but represented new, freer, more inventive ways of working in film.Clouzot on the contrary was old school, and was particularly noted for writing and story-boarding everything out ahead of time in the most scrupulous detail, as well as for working actors too hard. His 'Inferno' was to have been highly inventive in one respect, at least: he shot reams of experimental, "op-art" and prismatic lens shots, even creating "optical coitus" with spinning geometry and a zoom lens, as well as on-location reverse color images, planning visual equivalents of the Reggiani character's growing madness. The latest techniques were used, though the concept seems rather more like the surrealism of the Forties and Fifties than something new. Still, there's no way of knowing how well the film would have turned out. What is clear is that those experimental shoots took too long, and ate up funds as well as time. When it went beyond pure optical illusion in the studio and more and more required the participation of Reggiani and Schneider, the shooting, much of it extraneous to the script, began to strain the stars. Clouzot was a chronic insomniac and would wake crew members at two a.m. with new ideas. He made Reggiani spend an entire day running, shooting the same sequence over and over and exhausting him. Reggiani walked off the set, pleading a mysterious illness, and never came back. Jean-Louis Tritignant was called in to interview as a replacement, but that didn't work out. Shortly later Clouzot, then 56, had a heart attack. That was it. Clouzot only made one more film, La Prisonniere, and died in 1977, aged 70.Because the film wasn't finished, all the "preuves" were kept, and this film is interesting and unique for its lavish sampling of the experimental footage in which day-glo images spiral hypnotically or Marcek or his (imagined?) rival's faces merge, or Reggiani's or Schneider's faces are distorted as in a fun house. There's also detailed footage showing work to use color reversal to make the lake of the setting turn red when Marcel sees Odette water-skiing with Martineau (Jean-Claude Bercq), the local womanizer with whom she apparently has a fling.The trick as Bomberg, a specialist in cinematic history and film restoration, told it in a NYFF Q&A, was to get hold of the 185 cans of footage controlled by Clouzot's second wife, Inez. Getting caught in a stalled elevator for two hours with her convinced her that her experience with Bomberg was "special" enough to give him the rights she'd denied to many others, and she also passed the completed documentary, without cuts.The 'Inferno' footage is largely without sound, though there are test recordings of Reggiani uttering mad repetitious ravings as the wacked-out Marcel. Bomberg uses voice-overs to reconstruct some scenes of the film, and introduces five short scenes in which contemporary actors Berenice Bejo and Jacques Gamblin read from the script, to extrapolate.Though it's all a bit after-the-fact, and the value of the Clouzot film remains moot, the documentary has interviews with nine cast and crew members, including Catherine Allegret, then-production assistant Costa Gavras and assistant cinematographer William Lubtchansky. Details of the breakdown emerge, and it's due to Clouzot's employing three separate film crews unaware of each other's activities, and his endless re-shooting of simple sequences. As one talking head points out, the film might have gotten made if Clouzot hadn't been writer, director, and producer. A real producer might have speeded things up, thus saving everybody's nerves and the production.This is a glossy, beautifully crafted MK2 production and is a must-see for film buffs, particularly those interested in French cinema history. However as 'Variety' reviewer Todd McCarthy points out, important context is omitted in the failure to mention Clouzot's being out of commission throughout the Thirties in sanatoriums for mental problems. Maybe the widow wouldn't have wanted his lack of mental balance to be further discussed. McCarthy is also right that the dominant image you come away with is the radiant and obviously cooperative young Romi Schneider. Dany Carrel as "Marylou" is another pert sex kitten in the cast who shows off plenty for the camera. It's puzzling that in the Q&A the flamboyant but otherwise informative Bomberg (so chatty he who was reluctant to relinquish the mike both before and after the NYFF public screening), never once mentioned co-director Ruxandra Medrea. Anyway, this is a rich and evocative piece of cinematic documentation.Shown as part of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center 2009. Also featured at Cannes, Toronto, Vancouver, and the London Film Festival. To open in France November 11, 2009