Style
With the exception of the comedy film Miquette et sa mère, every directorial feature of Clouzot involves deception, betrayal and violent deaths. When basing screenplays on written work, Clouzot often changed the stories dramatically, using only key points of the original story. The author Stanislas-André Steeman, whom Clouzot worked with twice, said Clouzot would only "build something after having contemptuously demolished any resemblance to the original, purely for the ambition of effect". When writing for his own features, Clouzot created characters that were usually corrupt and spineless, with the capacity for both good and evil within them.
Clouzot was very demanding with his actors and would often quarrel with them to get them in the mood he desired. Suzy Delair recalled that Clouzot slapped her, but said of it, "So what? He slapped others as well...He was tough but I'm not about to complain". Pierre Fresnay recalled that Clouzot "worked relentlessly, which made for a juicy spectacle...That's to say nothing for his taste of violence, which he never tried with me". When working with Bardot, one scene required Bardot's character to drool and sleep. Clouzot offered her powerful sleeping pills, saying they were aspirin, and this led to Bardot's stomach being pumped. Although Clouzot was harsh on his actors, he did not treat them fiercely off set. Delair recalled that off set there was an "innocence about him" that was not seen.
Clouzot biographer Marc Godin suggested Clouzot's life provides clues to understanding his style as a filmmaker. Clouzot was viewed by many of his collaborators as a pessimist, short-tempered, and almost always angry. Actress Brigitte Bardot described Clouzot as "a negative being, forever at odds with himself and the world around him". Clouzot's outlook on life is reflected in his own films that reveal the darker side of humanity.
Read more about this topic: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unlike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)