L'Oeil du malin (1962)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

Just as Ophélia (1963) would be Claude Chabrol's re-interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, so L'Oeil du malin is obviously derived from the Bard's other great play, Othello, a tragic tale in which a man of dangerous passions is manipulated into destroying the thing he holds most dear, his young wife.  Chabrol's Iago, a mediocre journalist named Albin Mercier, isn't so much a cynical Machiavellian schemer as a pathetic psychotic who becomes consumed with the idea of inveigling his way into the lives of a seemingly harmonious couple so that he can usurp the man in the affections of his wife.  Mercier is a composite of Psycho's Norman Bates and Plein soleil's Tom Ripley, a social inadequate who, still living in the shadow of his domineering mother, must destroy the thing he craves if he cannot possess it entirely.  The most visually striking and disturbing of Chabrol's early (New Wave era) films, L'Oeil du malin explores themes which would come to predominate in the director's oeuvre and pretty well serves as a template for his subsequent psychological thrillers.   

"Things are never quite what they seem" is the phrase that most aptly sums up Claude Chabrol's cinema.  The seemingly placid bourgeois setting, inhabited by what appears to be the model married couple, is no more than a trompe l'oeil which masks the unsavoury truth lying just beneath the surface.  The perfect world that Mercier sees and grows to envy is just an illusion, a mirage that is largely of his own creation.  When he succeeds in entering this world, what the journalist finds is sordid imperfection that he cannot endure, so, like an artist confronted with his own failure, he must tear up the canvas, destroy this false vision of paradise.  Mercier is like a pathetic child who smashes a mirror because he cannot stand the sight of his own reflection.  Like Norman Bates, he is trapped in a bubble of self-loathing, forever alienated from the world around him by his vigorously repressed sexuality and contempt for other people's happiness. 

Psycho is not the only Hitchcockian influence in the film.  References to Rear Window (1954), The Wrong Man (1956), Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) are so easily spotted that no one could fail to recognise L'Oeil du malin as a fond homage to Hitchcock.  When he was a critic, Claude Chabrol (along with Eric Rohmer) was instrumental in establishing Hitchcock's credentials as a film auteur.  Previously, few critics had taken Hitchcock seriously, indeed most regarded him merely as a jobbing populist filmmaker.  It is therefore appropriate and hardly surprising that Hitchcock should be the director who would have most impact on Chabrol when he began to make his own films.  Indeed, Chabrol would ultimately earn himself the epithet of the France's answer to Alfred Hitchcock. 

L'Oeil du malin is the one Chabrol thriller in which the familiar Hitchcockian themes and motifs are most readily apparent.  The central character (Jacques Charrier in arguably his best screen role) is a psychotic paranoiac with voyeuristic tendencies, Norman Bates in all but name; the heroine (Stéphane Audran, a Chabrol regular) is an attractive blonde and unattainable object of desire who inevitably goes the same way as Janet Leigh; and the third member of the ill-fated ménage-à trois (an excellent Walter Reyer) is Hitchcock's recurring Wrong Man, the innocent who takes the rap when he falls prey to a cruel conspiracy of circumstances.  The suitably voyeuristic photography and slick editing build the suspense and create an aura of stifling menace, almost as effectively as Hitchcock.  You could even swear that the eerily discordant score had been composed by Bernard Herrmann. 

Although L'Oeil du malin is strongly reminiscent of Hitchcock's later films, Chabrol does manage to impose his own personality and style on the film, notably his antipathy for the false bourgeois milieu, along with the subtle irony and shards of dark humour that would come to characterise much of his subsequent work.  Chabrol takes the familiar premise of many a thriller and cleverly inverts it for his own ends.  It is not paradise destroyed by an incursion of evil that he shows us, but rather a paradise mired in evil that destroys the innocent outsider.  It is not the characters in Chabrol's films who are morally warped and prone to evil; it is the world in which they exist, a world of privilege that wallows in decadence and complacency, the perfect breeding ground for vice and murderous intent.  Beneath the veil of bourgeois calm and respectability we are sure to find the visage of another Medusa.

Film Synopsis

Embittered by his failure to make a success of his career as a journalist, Albin Mercier enjoys nothing more than bringing misery to others, particularly those who have made something of their lives.  He has an ideal chance to do just this in the course of a stay in Bavaria, where he is tasked with compiling an article on life in modern Germany.  Here, he strikes up an acquaintance with the celebrated writer Andréas Hartman and his enchanting wife Hélène.  These two seem to be the model of a settled and contented bourgeois couple.  They are obviously devotedly attached to each other and live in comfort and security.  Albin relishes the challenge of destroying their perfect world.

Within no time, by exercising his customary charm, the journalist has gained his victims' confidence and is a welcome guest in their house.  Albin begins his attack by trying to seduce Hélène, but this gets him nowhere.  Undeterred, he follows her on one of her frequent trips to Munich and is delighted to see her in the company of another man - obviously her secret lover.  After taking photographs of the adulterous couple, Albin attempts to blackmail Hélène but again he fails to drive a wedge between her and her husband.  He has only one course left open to him: he must tell Andréas about his wife's infidelity.  Albin's vile scheme works far better than he had dared imagine...