TSPDT

Key Production Countries: France, Italy
Key Genres: Psychological Thriller, Drama, Thriller, Crime Drama, Police Detective Film, Mystery, Psychological Drama
Key Collaborators: Armand Thirard (Cinematographer), Pierre Larquey (Leading Character Actor), Jérôme Géronimi (Screenwriter), Charles Vanel (Leading Actor), Madeleine Gug (Editor), Vera Clouzot (Leading Character Actress), Noel Roquevert (Leading Character Actor), Georges Auric (Composer), Louis Seigner (Character Actor), Jean Brochard (Character Actor), Pierre Fresnay (Leading Actor), Suzy Delair (Leading Actress)

"Certainly his output was much truncated by illness, but he has managed to leave behind several black suspense thrillers which have hardly a good character between them... But it was the early 1950s before Clouzot conjured up the two films on which his reputation largely rests. The first of these was the immensely successful The Wages of Fear (the second was Les Diaboliques)." - David Quinlan (Quinlan's Illustrated Guide to Film Directors, 1999)

"Henri-Georges Clouzot began his career in Berlin in the early 1930s working as as assistant director, making French versions of German films... Clouzot was an excellent craftsman who wrote most of his own scripts and plotted his suspenseful films long before shooting them - qualities that have led some to compare him with Hitchcock." - The Movie Book, 1999

"Clouzot's misanthropic movies are populated by characters who exhibit only the basest instincts... Devoid of sentimentality, his sour pessimism portrays people as predators and prey bent on self-preservation; though everyone, as in Renoir, has his reasons, the motivation is at best primevally instinctive, at worst malicious." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"If Renoir is the sud of French cinema, then Clouzot is an exponent of the nord. The enormous commercial success of Le Salaire de la Peur—one of the first French films to obtain a wide showing in English-speaking countries—and the deliberate emphasis on “putting the audience through it” in Les Diaboliques have made Clouzot artistically suspect. But he has a consistent vision that is more jaundiced than any other in the French cinema. Where Renoir tends always toward the acceptance of failings, Clouzot’s world disintegrates through mistrust, alienation, and a willful selfishness that is like an illness." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2010)

"In a country like France where good taste is so admired, Henri-Georges Clouzot has been a shocking director. A film critic during the age of surrealism, Clouzot was always eager to assault his audience with his style and concerns." - Dudley Andrew (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998)

"A master of suspense and violence with heavy psychological overtones." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

"I started as an editor, which is very important. I am always in the cutting room. I think you can't write properly unless you are an editor. I always have the cutting in mind when I'm shooting. Very often I look at my watch and say it's good for twenty seconds and not more." - Henri-Georges Clouzot