Product Details

• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Running time: 100 minutes

Amazon.com
Paul (François Cluzet) and Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart) have what seems to be a storybook marriage. They love each other madly and have worked together to turn their little lakeside inn into a gorgeous resort getaway while raising an adorable son. But there's a problem: Paul is convinced Nelly is having an affair and his jealousy spins to insane proportions. Hallucinations and nightmares twist his dementia until he imagines her sleeping with every man in sight, and his obsessive spying turns Nelly's life into a living hell. Claude Chabrol (director of La Cérémonie, known as the Gallic Hitchcock for his cool thrillers of obsessive love and homicidal passion, created his film from an original unfilmed screenplay by Henri-George Clouzot (Les Diaboliques). He injects Clouzot's dark, misanthropic tale with a soupçon of Hitchcock's voyeuristic obsession, but ultimately makes the film his own with unexpected sympathy for Paul, whose pathological jealousy spins out of control in a chilling conclusion that leaves the viewers uncomfortably nestled in his madness. The film faced charges of misogyny upon release largely because Chabrol remained steadfast in his portrayal of Paul not as a monster but a victim of madness (somewhat at the expense of Nelly, an angelic sexpot whose loyalty and love is almost sacrificial), but ultimately that's what gives L'Enfer its unsettling power. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Claude Chabrol has returned to the sunny provincial horrors of "Le Boucher." Paul (François Cluzet) is a successful hotelier, who marries Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart) and can't quite believe that she is faithful to him. Chabrol hauls us slowly through the stages of Paul's mad jealousy, from mild suspicion to a final, untethered hysteria. The weak link in the picture is Cluzet, who seems feeble and plaintive; you wouldn't blame Béart (whose beauty really is maddening) if she did start playing around. Chabrol adapted the story from an old screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot (the director of "Diabolique''), and added his own brand of casual foreboding. Who else could find such menace in the sound of jets crossing a peaceful summer sky? In French. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Film is fine; dvd transfer horrid.
I bought and had to return this DVD twice because it is a badly flawed transfer. Considerably worse than the VHS. Only filler was a trailer which was unwatchable because the video and audio broke up.

Not worth the price of DVD
A real bad quality tranfer of video

A choice piece of Cinematic presentation
This is a wonderful piece of work. It makes you tingle they way in which jealosy is portrayed as a person living in fear, anger and desperation. The iterview and commentary from the the director was also profound.

One of the best films I've ever seen.