Seine Gefangene

La prisonnière was HG Clouzot's final film and his only in colour. It tells the story of a young female film editor who meets an art dealer via her relationship with an abstract artist. She discovers he photographs erotic pictures of women. Partially appalled, partially intrigued she becomes hooked on his voyeurism and becomes one of his subjects. Its story focuses on themes of submission and dominance, with all three central characters at war with one and other to some extent.

I don't think the message was necessarily altogether clear at times and I think something must have been lost over the years in terms of the shock we are meant to feel at the erotic material. From the perspective of nowadays in the free-for-all that is the internet age, those images that presumably would have caused some shock back in 1968 seem actually quite quaint by today's anything-goes standards. So you do sort of have to remind yourself that this was a very different world back then in order to understand aspects such as this. I felt on the whole that the story seemed a bit under-developed and not entirely satisfying but what certainly did not disappoint me was the visual aesthetics on display. Considering this was Clouzot's only colour movie, it does have to be said that he embraces the medium in a pretty full-on way. The use of colour is rather splendid throughout. The early gallery scenes are visually delightful with much abstract, expressionistic and pop art imagery present throughout, all beautifully framed, while the closing psychedelic hallucination sequence was a mesmerizing example of visual artistry. So, for me at least, this is a film which is mostly of interest from an aesthetic point-of-view as opposed to a dramatic one. It definitely felt like the work of a young director, as opposed to a veteran, and so indicates the boldness that Clouzot had even in his final years. It's the sort of material that someone like Claude Chabrol could easily have been tackling at the time, except Clouzot's film is visually much more out there than anything that young new wave director every delivered. On the whole, this is a pretty impressively uncompromising bit of cinema for Clouzot to bow out on and is certainly one that should be of interest for anyone interested not only in French cinema of the period but of counter-cultural time-capsule movies as well.

Opening with the most eerie and perverse credit sequence you are ever likely to see, HG Clouzot's final film veers from claustrophobic mind games to swooning romance to 60s Pop Art psychedelia - without ever once losing the iron grip that was its director's trademark. It's Clouzot, and not the prolific but overrated Claude Chabrol, who deserves to be called 'the French Hitchcock.' Yet Clouzot, uninhibited by the demands of Hollywood 'box office,' was able to plumb depths of misanthropy and depravity that Hitch could scarcely dream of.

In La Prisonniere, he achieves the complete emotional and moral annihilation of all three protagonists. A young wife (Elisabeth Wiener) grows bored with her philandering artist husband (Bernard Fresson) and falls under the spell of a voyeuristic gallery owner (Laurent Terzieff) - who dabbles in kinky S&M photos on the side. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster...well, it is - but never quite in the ways we predict. The flamboyantly deranged Terzieff may, in fact, be the sanest character in this twisted triangle. So how crazy are the heroine and her hubby...?

Suffice it to say that, having produced an erotic and psychological thriller that outclasses any of Chabrol's more famous efforts of the late 60s, Clouzot then enters the tormented mind of his heroine - in a psychedelic 'head trip' to rival Kubrick's finale to 2001. A pity that Elisabeth Wiener (a forgotten 60s beauty in the style of Charlotte Rampling or Marianne Faithfull) never quite suggests the depths of anguish her role demands. Still, the magnificent Terzieff supplies angst enough for the whole cast. And he's not even the mad one...

David Melville

What this film lacks in substance is certainly made up for in the starling and typically 1968 visuals. The subject may be BDSM and voyeurism but the look is pure 60s kinetic and op-art. The portrayal as Stan as an obsessive photographer exploring his deeply felt notions of dominance and submission are somewhat muted by his role as art gallery owner, dealing in shimmering and revolving metallic sculptures and rightly coloured geometric shapes. Nevertheless he does a decent job of convincing and some of the photography scenes with his 'little housewife' turned adventuress and submissive are effective. The reliance on great flamboyant splashes of orange and yellow throughout encourage a smile rather than a concern and it is as if Clouzot himself is conflicted. Not the greatest film on the subject, it is certainly no Belle de Jour and despite the arty use of colour, no Blow Up, but still well worth a watch.

La Prisonniere tells the story of Stan, a man fascinated by the concept of submission and his experimentation with his own capacity to dominate. He manifests this fascination through photographing women as he instructs them to undress. When the rather conservative Jose decides she would like to pose for him she finds herself caught in a tormenting struggle between the shame and the pleasure she experiences through the act of submission. Here the film analyses the relationship between voyeur and 'viewed', which at first is hindered by her fear and instinctive prudence but later softens into mutual respect and affection. From the outset women are portrayed as sexual objects as Stan fingers his naked dolls in the opening credits in the same way as he poses his models, as if inanimate. However the images of naked women seen throughout, as well as Stan's treatment of his models, are essentially respectful and adoring rather than degrading. The extended motif of repetition, presented in the pattern and movement of the artwork, reflections in mirrors and the process of reproduction suggested by the photos and the printing press, emulate the intensity and invasiveness of Stans voyeurism. At the same time the optical illusions, played on the the gallery scenes, coupled with their emotive sound effects seem to hint at Jose's mental and emotional confusion towards her role as the servile model. The character of Stan is overtly sexual in his masculinity, authority and seemingly in his mere presence as he appears to cause Maguy to climax during her photo shoot. While he is tender and genuine in his love for Jose, he remains dominant and in control by not letting on to her. I found this film beautiful to watch despite its disturbing subject matter and I believe it is an emotive representation of how women can be tortured as well as gratified through both their sexual oppression and freedom.

This bizarre opus from Henri-Georges Clouzot has certainly divided opinion, described by some as profound and considered by others to have tarnished this great director's reputation. For this viewer at any rate it is technically accomplished and beautifully shot by Andréas Wilding but remains a rather cold, empty and indeed impotent enterprise that I felt obliged to watch but have not the least desire to revisit.

The master/slave relationship between the bored Josée of Elisabeth Wiener and Laurent Terzieff's disturbed Stanislas gradually turns to a seemingly genuine love but of course in Clouzot's world there is no such thing as a happy ending.........

The erotic element is supplied by the exotic Dany Carrel who was to have featured in 'L'Enfer'. In 'test shots' for that sadly aborted film Clouzot's camera lingers tantalisingly on her cleavage and here he is able to indulge himself more fully. There are those who will find her gyrations in a plastic mac to be either physically arousing or laughable.

Having been denied the chance to realise a psychedelic sequence in 'L'Enfer', the one he has given us here is truly outstanding but Kubrick had just beaten him to it. Likewise the connection between photography and voyeurism had already been handled to great effect by Powell and Antonioni whilst Bunuel's study of sexual fantasy from the previous year was balanced by that director's customary dark humour.

Always plagued by ill health, this was to be Clouzot's swansong and one is intrigued as to where he would have gone from here and how much further his misanthropy would have taken him had he continued filming. By all accounts a softcore porn film was mooted in the mid-seventies which would seem a natural progression.