9.02.2014

Heaven



Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (French title: L'Enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot) is a film directed, written and produced by Henri-Georges Clouzot, cinematography by Andréas Winding and Armand Thirard, which remained unfinished in 1964.

The film depicts the extreme jealousy of a hotelier, Marcel (Serge Reggiani, then 42 years old), towards his wife, Odette (Romy Schneider, then 26 years old). It was shot partly in black-and-white, partly in colour. Clouzot selected the title as an allusion to Dante's Inferno, and the names Odette and Marcel refer to characters inMarcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu.

Despite an unlimited budget from Columbia Pictures—Clouzot worked with three crews and 150 technicians—the shooting was beset by severe problems: everyone suffered from the record heat during July in the Cantal region; the main actor Serge Reggiani claimed to be ill (Jean-Louis Trintignant was asked to replace him); the artificial lake below the Garabit viaduct, an important part of the location, was about to be emptied by the local authorities; then Clouzot suffered a heart attack and was hospitalised in Saint-Flour. After three weeks, the film was abandoned.

See Serge Bromberg's full-length semi-documentary (2009) here.