L'Enfer

L'Enfer is an unfinished film by Henri-Georges Clouzot about a middle aged hotelier's extreme jealousy of his much younger wife. The film was to be shot in black & white with colour inserts to depict the husband's hallucinations and madness made up from experimental footage Clouzot had shot with cinematographer William Lubtchansky.

Due to a number of setbacks including a heatwave, the loss of major locations, one of the principal actors falling ill and finally Clouzot himself having a heart attack the production closed down and the film was abandoned in 1964.

In 2009 the documentarist Serge Bromberg found himself stuck in a lift with an elderly woman who turned out to be Clouzot's widow. She revealed to him that she was in possession of over 15 hours of L'Enfer rushes. He persuaded her to let him use the footage and it became the basis for his documentary about the unfinished film L'Enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot.

The test footage that Clouzot and Lubtchansky shot is fascinating. Much of it consists of close ups of lead actress Romy Schneider under various experimental lighting conditions. The light source was mounted on a rotating rig to create constantly changing shadows and colours heightening the changing emotion on her face and forming hypnotic nightmarish loops.

Here are some examples..

L'Enfer Lighting Tests