Ticket deal: 5 films for €45 / 10 films for €80 available from the Box Office or on 01 679 3477.

Based on the novel by Boileau and Narcejac (She Who Was No More) this is Clouzot’s most famous, most enduring film. Set in a boarding school for boys, a sadistic headmaster (Paul Meurisse) is abusive to his wife Nicole (Véra Clouzot) who has a heart condition; and to his latest mistress, icy teacher Nicole (Simone Signoret) who both work at the school. They bond and plot to kill him. But after his murder, his body mysteriously disappears… This is a heart-stopping, feverish thriller-horror in which Clouzot manipulates the audience with visual mastery.

Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard

This screening will be introduced by Tara Brady, film critic for The Irish Times.

We are delighted to present four features by writer/director Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977), which established him as a master of suspense, often termed ‘the French Hitchcock’. Dark, stylish, with an uncomfortable realism, Clouzot’s cinema brings us critique of bourgeois society, human obsession, neurosis, anxiety, paranoia and fear, all in meticulously detailed, atmospheric scenes and with wonderful turns by some of the great postwar French actors –Pierre Fresnay, Bernard Blier, Louis Jouvet, Paul Meurisse, Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, and without forgetting his wife Véra Clouzot. Click for details.

Programme organised with the support of the Institut Français, Paris and the French Embassy in Ireland. Special thanks to Christine Houard, Institut Français; Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Ireland.

Screening as part of the IFI French Film Festival – November 14th to 25th