Henri-Georges Clouzot was a top director in the 1970’ies. His successfull film gave him unlimited financial means for a project he called “l’Enfer” or “Inferno”. These means he did not use for grand trips, massive stages or tons of figurants, but for filmographic experimentations. Clouzot wanted to make a film about a man who thinks that his wife (Romy Schneider) cheats on him, having weird visions and eventually going berzerk. The film was never finished due to several reasons (the main player stepping out of the project, but mostly Clouzot’s heart-attack) and recently a great many (but not all) of the reels have been discovered. The two directors of this documentary tried to rebuild the film and the filming of it with that footage, interviews and old and recent images. Clouzot had his crew create reel after reel with the strangest experiments with colours, lenses, costumes and sound. The idea was that real-life would be short in black and white, but Marcel’s visions in insane colours and disturbed images and sounds. The result could have been interesting, but like I said, the project was never finished. This documentary gives footage from the experimental tapes that would never have been used anyway and relatively large parts of what was to be the film. Interesting.
