HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT’S INFERNO

Clouzot was the Hitchcock of French cinema, creating landmark films that bristled with nail-biting suspense. In 1964 he began production on L’Enfer (Inferno), a study of jealousy using distortions of sound and image, colour filters and ground-breaking effects to convey a married man’s paranoid state of mind.

Shooting fell behind schedule, lead actor Serge Reggiani walked off the set and Clouzot was felled by a heart attack before everyone decided to terminate the filming.

Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea’s documentary-drama offers a glorious account of what might have been, deftly combining substantial amounts of previously unseen footage, dramatic readings from the script and fresh interviews with crew members.

You quickly discover that Inferno could have been a film to rank alongside Vertigo or Peeping Tom and its abandonment is one of cinema’s great tragedies. This is a dazzling act of resurrection.

 VERDICT 4/5

(Cert 15; 96 mins)