Les Diaboliques (film)

Les Diaboliques French pronunciationl djabolik , released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends, is a 1955 French blackandwhite psychological thriller feature film directed by HenriGeorges Clouzot, starring Simone Signoret, Vra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse and Charles Vanel. It is based on the novel Celle qui ntait plus She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. The story blends elements of thriller and horror, with the plot focusing on a woman and her husbands mistress who conspire to murder the man after the crime is committed, however, his body disappears, and a number of strange occurrences ensue. The film was the 10th highest grossing film of the year with a total of 3,674,380 admissions in France.

A secondrate boarding school is run by the tyrannical and mean Michel Delassalle Meurisse. The school, though, is owned by Delassalles teacher wife, the frail Christina Clouzot, and Delassalle flaunts his relationship with Nicole Horner Signoret, a teacher at the school. Rather than antagonism, the two women are shown to have a somewhat close relationship, primarily based on their apparent mutual hatred of Michel, who is physically and emotionally abusive to both.Unable to stand his mistreatment any longer, Nicole devises a plan. Though hesitant at first, Christina ultimately consents to help Nicole. Using a threatened divorce to lure Michel to Nicoles apartment building in a remote village several hundred kilometers away, Christina sedates him. The two women then drown him in a bathtub and dump his body in the schools neglected swimming pool. When his corpse floats to the surface, they think it will appear to have been an accident. Almost everything goes according to their plans until the body fails to surface, and Michels corpse is nowhere to be found when the pool is drained. ........

Source: Wikipedia