Into the Inferno...

And so it begins...

The first film this year was Serge Bromberg's "L'Enfer de Henri-Georges Clouzot", a documentary about Clouzot's aborted attempt to make a film ("L'Enfer", or "Inferno") in 1964.

After making a number of now-classic films, including "The Wages of Fear" and "Diabolique", Clouzot secured a huge budget to make a film starring Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani about a husband's obsessive love of his wife turning to jealousy and, eventually, madness.

It became an exercise in obsession for Clouzot, an obsession much greater than that experienced by the husband played by Reggiani. Over 180 cans of film were shot before the production collapsed (Reggiani and other key personnel fled the set and Clouzot eventually had a heart attack).

Bromberg used the extant footage to construct a document of a doomed production. Included in the footage were test sequences heavily influenced by the psychedelic art of the 60's (the intent was to represent the husband's instability through visual and aural distortions). Given that the effects were done mostly with physical means (lens, lighting, makeup and colour treatments), the effects are still exhilarating.

As I watched it, it reminded me of three other films that I'd seen at previous festivals.

Clouzot was provided with what was essentially an "unlimited" budget for a film in 1964. It resulted in a freedom that contributed to endless numbers of test shots and retakes. In "Hearts of Darkness" (Fax Bahr's and George Hickenlooper's doc about the making of "Apocalypse Now"), one of the principals makes a statement about having too much money, then going into the jungle and slowly going mad).

"Lost in La Mancha" concerned the attempt by Terry Gilliam to film an adaptation of Don Quixote. While no less obsessed than Clouzot, Gilliam's production crashed as a result of a host of external factors (financial, medical and meteorological!).

A more direct link is to a film by Claude Chabrol based on the original script. I saw that version of "L'Enfer" in '94. It stripped the surrealist touches from the script and, unfortunately, what was left was a fairly pedestrian melodrama and a mediocre effect by another great director.

Bromberg's "L'Enfer" is a fascinating document of the collapse of a production. While it's impossible to tell whether the final product would have been successful, we are left with some stunning imagery.

During the post-film Q&A, Bromberg mentioned a web site called Europa Film Treasures, which is an umbrella site for the preservation of European film. Definitely worth a look.