A woman teaches at a boys' boarding school on an island off the coast of Washington State, near Seattle that has been in her family for years. Her husband is a beast, who treats her terribly, and openly cheats on her with one of the other teachers, who he's rough with as well. The wife and the mistress resolve to drown him and make it look like an accident.
I'd seen Les Diaboliques (1955) and Diabolique (1996), so this is the third adaptation of Boileau and Narcejac's novel I've seen (and there are still two others I haven't!). I'd read the novel, but I'm not sure if an English translation is available.
This was substantially the same as the original film. Differences that I particularly noticed were that Claire confesses to one of her students, which added nothing, and that there was no detective, which I felt was definitely missing.
The story is a good one, and I have a suspicion that the film version of it that people like the most may simply be the first version of it they see. Any subsequent version will have lost the impact and surprise. I like the 1955 version the best, which is the first that I saw. I think this one would be better than the 1996 version, except...
While it was pretty good, there was one thing that really hurt it for me: the character of Claire Elliott. She was *so* shrill, *so* weepy, *so* useless, *so* stupid that she really wasn't a sympathetic character at all. Part of the problem may have been with the screenplay and the way the character was written. However, I really feel a big part of the problem was with Joan Hackett's overacting. The character reminded me of all the bad traits of Mary Tyler Moore's Laura Petrie on the old Dick Van Dyke Show, but even more so. Some different casting would have helped a lot, or if the director kept her performance reined in a heck of a lot more. It may have been intentional though. Unlike the other films, the boys laugh at her. All but one of them even actually like her husband!
I'd seen Les Diaboliques (1955) and Diabolique (1996), so this is the third adaptation of Boileau and Narcejac's novel I've seen (and there are still two others I haven't!). I'd read the novel, but I'm not sure if an English translation is available.
This was substantially the same as the original film. Differences that I particularly noticed were that Claire confesses to one of her students, which added nothing, and that there was no detective, which I felt was definitely missing.
The story is a good one, and I have a suspicion that the film version of it that people like the most may simply be the first version of it they see. Any subsequent version will have lost the impact and surprise. I like the 1955 version the best, which is the first that I saw. I think this one would be better than the 1996 version, except...
While it was pretty good, there was one thing that really hurt it for me: the character of Claire Elliott. She was *so* shrill, *so* weepy, *so* useless, *so* stupid that she really wasn't a sympathetic character at all. Part of the problem may have been with the screenplay and the way the character was written. However, I really feel a big part of the problem was with Joan Hackett's overacting. The character reminded me of all the bad traits of Mary Tyler Moore's Laura Petrie on the old Dick Van Dyke Show, but even more so. Some different casting would have helped a lot, or if the director kept her performance reined in a heck of a lot more. It may have been intentional though. Unlike the other films, the boys laugh at her. All but one of them even actually like her husband!