Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (2009) February 19, 2011

It took the jungles of Southeast Asia to push Francis Ford Coppola over the edge during the making of Apocalypse Now. All Henri-Georges Clouzot needed was a soon-to-be flooded valley in the beautiful French countryside and his own troubled mind. The maker of such masterpieces as Diabolique and The Wages of Fear, Clouzot had already been hailed as the Gallic Hitchcock when in 1964 he took a nod from the New Wave and made a hallucinatory psychological thriller about a man driven mad by jealousy. The unfinished project, Inferno, starred the gorgeous, young Romy Schneider as a water-skiing vixen and Serge Reggiani as her possessive husband. Serge Bromberg's Cesar-winning documentary resurrects a treasure trove of footage shot by Clouzot and tells the story of how badly things can go wrong, even for the most gifted of directors.