"Actor: Jacques Varennes"

• Diabolique | Blu Ray | (05/06/2017) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Legend has it that Henri-Georges Clouzot beat out Alfred Hitchcock to secure the rights to this novel, which proved to be a veritable blueprint for an icy masterpiece of murder, mystery and suspense. Véra Clouzot plays the sickly wife of a callous headmaster of a provincial boarding school going to seed, and the commanding Simone Signoret is the headmaster's mistreated mistress. Together they plot and carry out his murder, a brutal drowning that director Clouzot documents in chilly detail, but the corpse disappears and a nosy detective starts sniffing around the grounds as threatening notes taunt the women. Clouzot's thriller is as precise and accomplished a work as anything in Hitchcock's canon, a film of gruelling suspense and startling shocks in an overcast, grey world of decay, but his icy manipulations lack the human dimension and emotional resonance of the master of suspense. Many critics have accused the film of being misanthropic, and Clouzot's attitude toward his characters is bitter at best, contemptuous at worst. The viewer is left on the outside looking in, but the razor precision and terrifying twists deliver a sleek, bleak spectacle worthy of attention. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com

• Les Diaboliques | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Henri-Georges Clouzot cast his own wife Vera as the hapless victim in this acclaimed masterpiece of the macabre. A wife plans the murder of her tyrant husband with the help of his mistress yet when his body dissappears panic and confusion ensues... The Great Suspense Film That Shocked the World... And Became A Classic.

• LA POISON | Blu Ray | (25/02/2013) from £18.88   |  Saving you £1.11 (5.88%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: New HD restoration of the film, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery

• LA POISON | DVD | (25/02/2013) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery