Chronicling the debacle that culminated in the canning of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1964 thriller, L’Enfer, this is an object lesson in screen history.
Setting out to convey mental disintegration in visual terms, Clouzot employed with a range of avant-garde colouring techniques with stars Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani. The results were extraordinary, and it’s one of cinema’s tragedies that this tale of an insanely jealous husband was never finished. But in piecing together footage found in 185 long-forgotten cans, Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea have salvaged Clouzot’s vision and produced a near-masterpiece of their own.