Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (2009)

By 1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot was an established and successful director, having helmed such acclaimed films as Les Diaboliques and The Wages of Fear. The new decade, however, saw a new type of filmmaking emerge in Europe, with its younger directors and avant-garde style. Taking inspiration from Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, Clouzot was determined to make a film that would re-invent cinema. The project was called L'Enfer (Inferno) and told the story of a middle-aged hotelier's descent into madness brought on by jealousy over his beautiful younger wife. Despite being given an unlimited budget from the studio, and working with no fewer than 3 crews and 150 technicians, the film had already begun to collapse under its own weight when Clouzot suffered a heart attack on set just 3 weeks into shooting. The project was scrapped at that point and essentially forgotten about ... until a few decades later when a chance encounter inside a stalled elevator between a young producer named Serge Bromberg and Clouzot's widow, Ines de Gonzalez, led to Bromberg being given access to 185 reels of film from the unfinished movie for the purpose of creating a documentary about it. Bromberg and his production partner, Ruxandra Medrea, sifted through the roughly 15 hours of footage, interviewed some of the surviving crew members and others involved, and hired two actors to reenact a few scenes. This is an incredibly interesting documentary on a film that may very well have become a cinematic masterpiece had Clouzot been able to see it through to completion in 1964. Cutting edge experimental photography, a beautiful location (the Auvergne region of France) and a luminous Romy Schneider in the lead. Kudos to Bromberg and Medrea for bringing this lost piece of cinema history out into the open and giving it the attention it deserves. Highly recommended.

The gestapo and camp commandant want Lewis to lure the kids into the gas chamber as the clown. They threaten to send him to the gas chamber if he refuses. Last scene is of Lewis leading the kids into the gas chamber. The door closes with Lewis inside the chamber. Screen goes dark. The end. Left up to the viewer whether the clown intentionally got himself into the gas chamber because he couldn't live with what he was doing, or, he got double crossed by the gestapo.