See this film: Diabolique at the HFA

Henri-Georges Clouzot has often been compared to Hitchcock, but even the master of suspense couldn't come up with some of the excruciating twists that are in the French director's masterpiece Diabolique (1955). The mistress (Simone Signoret) and the wife (Vera Clouzot, the director's spouse) of the headmaster of a miserable boarding school agree that the guy is a pig and plot to do him in. They may have justice on their side, but what about fate? Especially when it's determined by a gleefully misanthropic, sublimely manipulative storyteller like Clouzot. It screens tonight and tomorrow at the Harvard Film Archive in the Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge | Saturday, December 17 @ 7 pm | $9; $7 students, seniors | 617.495.4700 or hcl.harvard.edu/hfa.