It
is maybe the most infamous unfinished film ever, with its poignancy heightened
by its tragic star. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno
is now probably every cineastes’ favorite lost movie, thanks to Serge
Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea Annonier’s documentary (released in New York in
2010), but Romy Schneider would probably be the favorite of far more movie fans
had she not died prematurely at forty-three, from cardiac arrest. She should be
considered an icon on the level of Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren. Viewers
will understand that assertion when they watch The Inferno Unseen (trailer here), a collection of surviving
rushes and screen tests from Clouzot’s film that never was, assembled into a
master-cut by Rollo Smallcombe & Marketa Uhlirova, which screens on the
opening night of the Fashion in Film Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image.
Clouzot
was often dubbed the “French Hitchcock,” but his work seemed dated during the
era of the Nouvelle Vague. However, the suspense auteur had a vision that would have leap-frogged all the
New Wavers. As he originally conceived Inferno,
it would have told the story of a jealous older husband possibly driven to
murderous extremes by his highly desirable young wife, but there would have
been experimental interludes that would have expressed his psychological turmoil
through surreal imagery. Despite a lot of money spent by Columbia Pictures, it
never came together.
The
Bromberg-Annonier documentary tells that story quite compellingly. In Unseen, Smallcombe & Uhlirova invite
us to engage with the images directly, with minimal filters, aside from a
smattering of commentary from Bromberg. Taking in this footage is a weird
experience. You feel like you are watching the ghost of a film that was
stillborn, yet still haunts the cinematic collective unconscious, very much
like the work print of Orson Welles’ The Deep that screened at MoMA in 2015.
Of
course, Schneider makes it even more haunting. She was one of the few movie
stars who could exude sexual magnetism through the screen yet was also totally credible
playing classy and cerebral characters. In fact, the surviving footage is
surprising steamy, thanks to Schneider and French starlet Dany Carrel, who both
rock the frocks and swimwear designed by legendary film costumer Jacques Fonteray
(whose credits include Barbarella, Borsalino,
and Moonraker). There is indeed
good reason Inferno Unseen is opening
the Fashion in Film Festival.
