Before I dive into Repulsionand why it matters to me as a film, I have to be honest about something that weighs heavily on me. Roman Polanski’s history, his conviction for sexual assault, makes it impossible for me to talk about his work without acknowledging the pain and harm he’s caused. I can’t just separate the art from the artist and pretend that his actions don’t matter. So, as I explore Repulsion here, and its impact on cinema, I want to make it clear that I’m not celebrating Polanski as a person, nor am I excusing or overlooking what he’s done. This isn’t easy for me to reconcile, and I feel really uncomfortable even discussing a film that deals so directly with themes of sexual violence, knowing what we know about the man who created it. It’s also worth remembering that filmmaking is always a collective effort—so many talented people, both in front of and behind the camera, leave their own indelible mark on the finished work. My plan here is to look honestly at the film’s artistry, how it’s shaped the genre, and its contribution to the decade of 1960s cinema while holding space for the hard truths surrounding it. It still gives me a heavy heart, while honoring how complex both the art and the reality behind it are.
SPOILER ALERT!
REPULSION 1965
“Cracks in the Looking Glass: The Silent Shattering of Repulsion”
Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) stands as a haunting, visceral journey into psychological disintegration and remains one of the most influential arthouse horror films of the 1960s. From its opening frames, the film draws us into the claustrophobic world of Carol Ledoux, played with mesmerizing subtlety and mounting terror by Catherine Deneuve. The film is at once clinical and feverish, guiding us through the slow unraveling of Carol’s mind with a precision that is both chilling and deeply empathetic.
Set in a drab London flat, the story follows Carol, a young Belgian manicurist living with her older sister, Helen (Yvonne Furneaux). From the outset, Carol is portrayed as withdrawn, almost childlike, her beauty offset by an unsettling detachment from the world around her. Deneuve’s performance is a concentration in restraint: her wide, unblinking eyes and hesitant movements suggest a woman perpetually on the edge, her discomfort with men and sexuality simmering just beneath the surface. When Helen leaves for a holiday with her married lover, Carol is left alone in the apartment, and the film’s atmosphere shifts from uneasy to nightmarish.
The camera lingers on the details of Carol’s environment—cracked walls, ticking clocks, the oppressive silence of the flat—turning the mundane into the menacing. As Carol’s isolation deepens, so does her paranoia. The apartment becomes a physical extension of her psyche: fissures appear in the walls, hands reach out from the hallway, and the once-familiar space warps into a labyrinth of surreal and hallucinatory terror.
The lens in Repulsion uses tight framing, distorted angles, and surreal imagery to mirror Carol’s unraveling mind. The apartment’s shifting spaces and visual distortions immerse us in her paranoia, making her psychological terror palpable.
Gilbert Taylor’s cinematography is crucial in this transformation. He employs stark black-and-white contrasts, distorted angles, and inventive use of sound to evoke Carol’s fractured reality. The camera often hovers just behind her, trapping us in her subjective experience, while sudden shifts in focus and perspective mirror her mental collapse.
Repulsion’s use of subjective camerawork, all the surreal imagery, and sound design has influenced countless other filmmakers. The film’s approach to visualizing psychological states paved the way for modern thrillers and horror films that prioritize atmosphere and character perspective over explicit exposition.
The film’s narrative unfolds with a relentless, dreamlike logic. Carol’s daily routines—her work at the beauty salon, her awkward encounters with her persistent suitor Colin (John Fraser), who makes repeated attempts to court her despite her clear discomfort and detachment- become increasingly fraught. The film orchestrates a series of escalating disturbances: the rotting rabbit left on the kitchen table, the relentless ringing of the doorbell, the echo of footsteps in empty rooms. Each incident chips away at Carol’s fragile composure.
As Carol’s grip on reality slips further, the apartment is invaded by hallucinations: sexual assaults by shadowy figures, hands emerging from the walls, and the ever-widening cracks that seem to threaten the very structure of the building. Deneuve’s performance here is nothing short of astonishing— yet she never descends into caricature. Instead, she embodies a kind of haunted innocence, her trauma rendered with heartbreaking clarity.
The direction is unsparing, refusing to offer easy explanations or comfort. The film’s climax is a harrowing, feverish, psychic drift: When Carol refuses to let the predatory landlord (Patrick Wymark) into her apartment, he forces his way inside through her barricade and tries to sexually assault her.
Carol’s panic and trauma are sharply magnified by the landlord’s actions, which escalate from unsettling advances to outright aggression and violation. His forceful entry into her private sanctuary is not just a physical threat—it becomes a chilling embodiment of the film’s persistent themes of male dominance and sexual violence. This intrusion shatters any sense of safety Carol might have left, underscoring how the boundaries of her world are repeatedly breached by predatory intent. The scene powerfully reflects the broader anxieties at the heart of the film, where acts of violation reverberate through every shadowed corner, fueling Carol’s psychological descent.
Carol’s terror and violent response are direct results of this violation, and the film frames her actions as a desperate act of self-defense against a man who refuses to respect her boundaries or her bodily autonomy. The film’s atmosphere is saturated with symbols of patriarchal aggression and sexual threat, and the landlord’s intrusion is one of the most explicit examples.
The narrative, as well as the ambiguous direction, tries to make it clear that Carol’s panic is justified, and her violent reaction is a response to an act that is, in both symbolic and practical terms, an attempted sexual assault. Or is the film misdirecting us? Is the landlord, who is stabbed to death by Carol, imagined as is the attempted rape? Here, the ambiguity is central. Most critics and film historians agree that Repulsion intentionally blurs the line between reality and hallucination throughout the film. The subjective camera work, surreal sound design, and Carol’s increasingly fractured perception make it difficult to determine what is objectively happening and what is a projection of her trauma and psychosis. The scene in which Carol’s landlord attacks her is staged with disturbing realism, and her violent response is shown in detail. However, the film’s refusal to anchor us in what is taking place as an objective reality means that even this harrowing moment is left open to interpretation.
Repulsion is renowned for its deliberate ambiguity, especially in its most harrowing moments. While the narrative presents Carol’s panic and violence as justified responses to real threats—most notably the landlord’s intrusion and attempted assault—many critics have observed that Polanski’s direction blurs the boundaries between reality and hallucination. The film’s subjective camera, surreal sound design, and Carol’s increasingly fractured perception dare us to question what is truly happening and what may be a projection of her inner turmoil.
In particular, the landlord’s assault is staged with a disturbing realism, and the film never fully anchors us in objective reality. The oppressive atmosphere, the way the apartment seems to warp and close in, and the film’s refusal to offer external perspectives all contribute to a sense of unreliability. Some scholars and critics have argued that, by immersing us so completely in Carol’s point of view, Polanski leaves open the possibility that some events—perhaps even the landlord’s attack—could be imagined or distorted by her psychosis.
Carol, now completely unmoored, murders the lecherous landlord in a desperate act of self-defense, whether real or imagined, then retreats into catatonia. Her response is both shocking and inevitable. His blood stains the stark white walls. The final images linger on her vacant stare, the camera pulling back to reveal a family photograph that hints at the roots of her psychological torment. As Carol is carried out, catatonic, the camera’s slow, almost mournful movement across the living room mantle lingers on objects that seem to hold fragments of her fractured psyche: childhood toys, a maternal photograph, the remnants of a failed attempt at sewing, even a broken cracker. Each item is freighted with silent meaning, hinting at innocence lost and the subtle, cumulative traumas that have shaped Carol’s world.
Just when we expect the camera to settle on the family photograph—perhaps to confirm our suspicions about the roots of Carol’s disturbance—the film cuts to black. It’s a masterstroke of misdirection, making us momentarily question whether the film will offer any answers at all. But then, in a haunting coda, the photo reappears, this time more ominous: everyone but the father is obscured in shadow, and as the camera zooms in on the young Carol’s eyes, the image dissolves into abstract splotches, echoing the film’s opening and suggesting a mind overwhelmed by darkness and ambiguity.
There’s a chilling ambiguity in the coda. Is it a clue, an afterthought for clarity, a studio-mandated addition, or a final, sly wink from the director? The film refuses to resolve its mysteries, leaving us with only hints and shadows. The photo’s composition—crisscrossed with darkness, the father in half-shadow, the dog looming, Carol’s eyes drawing us in—invites speculation about the origins of Carol’s trauma but never settles on a single, reductive answer.
The tonal shift that follows is equally striking. As Carol is discovered under the bed, the horror gives way to a kind of absurdist comedy. The tenants pour into the apartment, their reactions exaggerated and oddly theatrical. Instead of the expected cacophony, each character delivers their lines in turn, as if on stage, their suggestions and observations growing increasingly ridiculous. This stylized, almost farcical sequence undercuts the horror, highlighting the disconnect between Carol’s internal chaos and the banal, performative concern of those around her.
Repulsion ends not with a neat solution, but with a lingering sense of unease and irony. The film’s final moments refuse closure, instead offering a fractured mirror in which we glimpse both Carol’s suffering and the world’s inability—or unwillingness-to truly see or understand it. In this way, the film’s coda becomes not just a possible explanation, but a final, unsettling question mark, haunting the viewer long after the screen goes dark.
Repulsion made a profound impact on 1960s cinema, pushing the boundaries of what psychological horror could achieve. Its unflinching exploration of female alienation ot mental illness was groundbreaking, influencing a generation of filmmakers and paving the way for later works like Rosemary’s Baby 1968 and The Tenant 1976. The film’s visual style—its use of subjective camerawork, surreal imagery, and sound design—became hallmarks of the genre, while Deneuve’s performance remains one of the most celebrated portrayals of psychological breakdown in film history.
In the end, Repulsion is more than a horror film; it is a study in the terror of the everyday, a portrait of a mind besieged by forces both internal and external. The film blurs reality and hallucination, using Carol’s subjective experience to explore mental illness from the inside. Her descent into psychosis is depicted with empathy and uncertainty, prompting us to question what is real and what is imagined.
Repulsion beautifully captures the elusive blend of psychological revelation, visual poetry, and tonal ambiguity. Polanski’s meticulous direction, combined with Deneuve’s unforgettable performance and Taylor’s evocative cinematography, creates an atmosphere of dread that is as beautiful as it is disturbing. The film’s legacy endures, its influence visible in countless psychological thrillers and its power to unsettle undiminished by time. Repulsion channels the era’s anxieties about urban alienation, shifting gender roles, and sexual repression. Carol’s isolation and fear reflect broader cultural uncertainties about women’s autonomy and the pressures of modern city life in postwar Europe.
Catherine Deneuve’s performance set a new standard for depicting psychological breakdown—her subtle, internalized terror inspired later portrayals of female protagonists in horror and psychological thrillers, showing that vulnerability and ambiguity could be as unsettling as overt hysteria.
Catherine Deneuve began her film career in 1957, appearing in minor roles as a teenager, and she worked steadily throughout the early 1960s. Her real breakthrough came with Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964). In The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Deneuve stars as Geneviève, a luminous, middle-class young woman swept up in a bittersweet romance with Guy, played by Nino Castelnuovo. The film’s entirely sung dialogue and Michel Legrand’s unforgettable score turned it into a landmark of romantic cinema and launched Deneuve to international stardom. Roger Vadim would cast her in his film Vice and Virtue (Le Vice et la Vertu, 1963).
Deneuve went on to do Polanski’s Repulsion 1965, playing the disturbed young woman Carol, who plunges into a despairing nightmare world of paranoia, persecution, and violence. She is also known for her outstanding performance as a married woman who has a secret life as a prostitute. In Bunuel’s Belle du Jour 1967. And of course her role as the sensuously enigmatic vampiress in Tony Scott’s The Hunger 1983. There’s something almost mythic about Catherine Deneuve’s beauty—it’s not just her striking features, but the way she carries herself, luminous and enigmatic, with an elegance that seems both timeless and utterly effortless. Her iconic cheekbones or that cascade of blonde hair, but in the poise, intelligence, and subtle wit she brings to every role, there is no argument to be made- Catherine Deneuve is one of the most beautiful women in the world.
LES DIABOLIQUES 1955
“Shadows Beneath Still Waters: The Lethal Allure of Diabolique”
Beneath the placid surface of Les Diaboliques lies a world where dread seeps in like water through cracked stone, saturating every shadow and silence. The film’s effect is that of a sinister ambiance where reason dissolves into a tempest of thoughts, swirling confusion, and fractured light, at once seductive and suffocating, drawing us into a labyrinth of suspicion and fear, and shifting mirages. Where trust collapses and reality wavers like a reflection on a rain-darkened pool. Its murky waters, black as forgetting, might or might not shelter a body, or merely the echo of suspicion.
Watching Les Diaboliques is like wandering through a house of mirrors at midnight: each corridor reveals another distortion, another secret, until certainty itself is lost in the fog. Les Diaboliques lingers long after its final frame, a chill on the skin and a whisper in the dark, its mysteries rippling outward, a testament to cinema’s power to haunt, unsettle, and seduce our imaginations.
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) remains a masterwork of psychological suspense, a film whose ripples are still felt in the thriller and horror genres. Set in a decaying French boarding school, the story unfolds with a slow-burning tension that seeps into every frame, drawing us into a web of deceit, guilt, and fear. The film’s atmosphere is thick with unease from the start: the school itself, with its damp corridors and oppressive gloom, emerges like a silent conspirator, mirroring the emotional states of the people trapped within its walls.
At the heart of Les Diaboliques is the fraught relationship between Christina Delassalle (Véra Clouzot), the frail and anxious wife of the school’s sadistic headmaster, Michel (Paul Meurisse), and Nicole Horner (Simone Signoret), Michel’s mistress. Rather than rivals, Christina and Nicole are bound by mutual suffering; Michel’s cruelty has left both women desperate and broken, forging an uneasy alliance between them. Clouzot’s direction lingers on Christina’s nervous glances and Nicole’s steely resolve, crafting a dynamic that is as psychologically rich as it is suspenseful.
Simone Signoret was a force of nature—her presence on screen was as magnetic as it was enigmatic, blending a world-weary sensuality with a fierce intelligence that set her apart from her contemporaries. In Les Diaboliques, she embodies Nicole Horner with a cool, unflinching poise, her every glance and gesture charged with both danger and allure. Signoret’s sensuality was never merely surface-level; it was rooted in her confidence, her unapologetic complexity, and the sense of lived experience she brought to each role. Simone Signoret, for me, is the very embodiment of cinematic greatness—a woman whose talent blazes across the screen, whose sensuality is as deep as it is defiant, and whose raw courage in every role leaves an indelible mark on my heart; she is not just an actress, but a force who redefined what it means to be both vulnerable and unbreakable in the art of film.
Her acting was remarkable for its subtlety and depth. Signoret could communicate entire histories with a look, layering her characters with longing, regret, and defiance. She was a master of ambiguity—capable of being both sympathetic and intimidating, vulnerable and implacable, often within the same scene. In Les Diaboliques, her performance anchors the film: Nicole’s steely resolve and simmering passion are palpable, and Signoret’s ability to convey strength without sacrificing nuance elevates the suspense and emotional stakes of the story.
Signoret’s impact extended far beyond a single film. She was the first French actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her unforgettable role in Room at the Top (1959), where she played Alice Aisgill with heartbreaking dignity and sensuality. This performance, along with her work in Casque d’Or (1952) and Les Diaboliques (1955), cemented her reputation as one of cinema’s most formidable talents. She was celebrated not only for her beauty and charisma but for her uncompromising commitment to truth in performance—she inhabited women who were complex, flawed, and fully alive. Simone Signoret delivers a performance of profound emotional depth and intelligence in Ship of Fools 1965, embodying a woman scarred by love and exile, while in Curtis Harrington’s Games 1967, she brings a chilling, enigmatic presence to yet another psychological thriller, her subtlety and raw vulnerability elevating both films into unforgettable studies of human complexity.
Simone Signoret’s legacy is one of fearless artistry. She redefined what it meant to be a leading lady, infusing her roles with intellect, sensuality, and emotional honesty. Her influence can be seen in generations of actors who followed, inspired by her example to pursue roles that challenge, provoke, and endure.
Diabolique is not a ghost story in the traditional sense, though it masterfully plays with the trappings and atmosphere of supernatural horror. The film is constructed as a psychological thriller and mystery, steeped in suspense and ambiguity, but its chills arise from human schemes and manipulation rather than genuine hauntings.
While Les Diaboliques borrows the mood and suspense of a ghost story, it is ultimately a tale of human treachery, not the supernatural. Throughout the film, director Henri-Georges Clouzot uses eerie visuals, unexplained phenomena, and the suggestion of a vengeful spirit to unsettle both the characters and us. The disappearance of Michel’s body, mysterious sightings, and the final bathtub sequence all evoke the feeling that something otherworldly might be at play. Christina’s fragile state and the oppressive, shadow-filled setting further blur the line between reality and nightmare.
However, the film’s climactic twist reveals that the apparent supernatural events are the result of an elaborate plot, not ghostly intervention. The terror that haunts Christina is rooted in psychological manipulation and human deceit, not the return of the dead. In the end, Diabolique uses the suggestion of a ghost story as a tool to heighten suspense and mislead the audience, but it remains firmly grounded in the realm of psychological and criminal intrigue.
The plot, deceptively simple at first, begins with a plan: Nicole and Christina, united by their shared torment, decide to murder Michel. Their scheme is meticulously plotted—Nicole lures Michel to her apartment under the pretense of reconciliation, and Christina, despite her weak heart and trembling nerves, helps drown him in the bathtub. The body is then transported back to the school, placed inside a large wicker laundry hamper, and dumped in the murky swimming pool, with the hope that Michel’s death will be written off as an accident.
Clouzot’s cinematography is essential to the film’s impact. Shadows pool in corners, light flickers across anxious faces, and every creak or drip of a faucet is amplified by the film’s careful sound design. The camera lingers on Christina’s haunted expressions, the claustrophobic interiors, and the still, ominous surface of the darkened, murky pool. These visual choices serve not just to heighten suspense but to immerse us in Christina’s mounting dread. The film’s pacing is deliberate, allowing paranoia and guilt to take root and blossom, while the ever-present threat of discovery keeps the tension at a simmer.
As the days pass, the women’s nerves begin to fray. The body fails to surface, and strange occurrences unsettle Christina: Michel’s suit returns from the dry cleaner, a student claims to have seen him, and finally, the pool is drained—only for Michel’s body to have vanished. The sense of reality itself becomes slippery, and Christina’s fragile health deteriorates under the strain. Clouzot masterfully blurs the line between psychological torment and supernatural suggestion, making us question what is real and what is the product of Christina’s unraveling mind.
Simone Signoret’s Nicole is practical, unflinching, but not immune to fear, while Véra Clouzot’s performance is a study in mounting anxiety and vulnerability. Their dynamic is electric, with each woman’s strengths and weaknesses playing off the other.
While Les Diaboliques appears to present Christina’s terror and her fatal reaction as justified responses to genuine threats, most notably the eerie return of Michel and the mounting sense of supernatural menace, Clouzot’s direction masterfully unsettles any easy certainty. The film’s visual style—its shadow-drenched corridors, lingering close-ups, and oppressive atmosphere- renders Christina’s reality porous and unstable. In these moments, Clouzot draws us into her fragile psyche, blurring the line between actual threat and psychological manipulation.
The supposed haunting of the school, the vanishing body, and the climactic bathtub scene are all staged with such chilling realism that we, like Christina, are left questioning what is truly happening and what might be a product of fear, guilt, or deliberate deceit. Clouzot’s genius lies in this ambiguity: the supernatural is always suggested but never confirmed, leaving us suspended between rational explanation and ghostly possibility.
As a result, the film’s most harrowing moments—Christina’s panic, her collapse, and the apparent resurrection of Michel—remain suspended in doubt. Is she truly haunted by a vengeful spirit, or is she the victim of a meticulously orchestrated plot? Clouzot refuses to offer a simple answer, compelling us to inhabit Christina’s terror and uncertainty. The brilliance of Diabolique is that its horror lingers not in what is revealed, but in what remains unresolved, haunting the screen with the possibility that, in Christina’s world, reality itself is always just out of reach.
The film’s climax is legendary: Christina, alone in the darkened school, is confronted by what appears to be Michel’s corpse rising from the bathtub. The sequence is a tour de force of suspense and shock, culminating in Christina’s fatal heart attack. Only then is the full extent of the plot revealed—Nicole and Michel, very much alive, have orchestrated the entire ordeal to frighten Christina to death and claim her inheritance. Yet, in true Clouzot fashion, the story does not end with their triumph; a final twist suggests that justice, or perhaps something more uncanny, may yet prevail.
Les Diaboliques is not merely a tale of murder and betrayal; it is a meditation on guilt, manipulation, and the fragility of perception. Its influence can be seen in countless films that followed, from Hitchcock’s Psycho—which borrowed its shock tactics and ambiguous morality—to modern psychological thrillers that favor suggestion over gore. The film’s visual style, with its use of ordinary settings to evoke terror and its reliance on atmosphere and character-driven tension, set a new standard for cinematic suspense.
It’s well documented that Hitchcock wanted to adapt the same source novel, but lost the rights to Clouzot by mere hours. After the release of Les Diaboliques (1955), critics and historians have noted that Hitchcock admired Clouzot’s mastery of suspense and that the film’s shocking twists and chilling atmosphere left a mark on him.
The “Send her to the dry cleaners” anecdote: This story is widely recounted in film literature and by critics such as Roger Ebert. After Psycho was released, a man wrote to Hitchcock saying his daughter was now afraid to take a shower after Psycho, having already been afraid to take a bath after Les Diaboliques. Hitchcock’s witty reply—“Send her to the dry cleaners”—is a famous bit of film lore and appears in reputable sources, including Ebert’s reviews and The Independent.
Critics and historians consistently observe that Hitchcock admired Clouzot’s work. There is clear evidence that Hitchcock admitted an equal debt to Clouzot, and many elements of Les Diaboliques—from its shocking plot twists to its suspense-building techniques and even its marketing strategies (such as not allowing late admissions)—were echoed in Hitchcock’s own work. While Hitchcock’s earlier films inspired Clouzot, Les Diaboliques is widely credited with pushing Hitchcock to explore even darker, more psychologically complex territory, especially in Psycho. Critics note that Hitchcock screened Les Diaboliques for his crew during the making of Psycho and emulated its anti-spoiler campaign.
Les Diaboliques is widely credited with expanding the boundaries of the psychological thriller and horror genres, particularly in Europe. Its blend of suspense, horror, and psychological manipulation influenced filmmakers such as Dario Argento and Mario Bava, as well as later directors who sought to evoke terror through atmosphere and ambiguity rather than explicit violence. The film is less about subjective camerawork or internal psychological breakdown and more about external manipulation, suspense, and the ambiguity between rational and supernatural explanations.
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