Les Diabolique (1955, French)
Nowadays, abuse does not just encompass physical and sexual kind. In development psychology, a different type of abuse is often quoted as having a detrimental effect on the maturing mind. One with no physical evidence but is said to leave a mark so deep that it may just jostle the living daylight out of a person's future. They call it psychological abuse. The constant advice (imparting of knowledge or life experience or nagging as the receiver perceives it) is so painful that living seems not worth it!
I find this a little perplexing. I thought what does not kill a person, only makes him stronger! And how is one to know his real potential if he does not scrape the barrel's bottom? The world would have no Michael Jackson if his father just gave in to his whims and fancies of the unknowing child who does not know the purpose of repeated and gruelling training. Nevertheless, that is the recipe of modern parenting for you - a liberal dose of mollycoddling, sprinkled with helicopter parenting to cushion the trauma of a fall and avoidance of negative vibes at all cost!
This classic French psychological thriller is said to rival Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. Apparently, Hitchcock failed to secure this film's rights just a few hours before it was taken up.
This film has nothing to do with parenting but all to do with psychological abuse.
An uncouth headmaster, Michel Delassalle, is running a boarding school with an iron fist. The school is actually owned by his wife, Christina, but he runs like his own, shoving his orders to the teachers and punishing the students indiscriminately. He even has the gall openly to have an affair with one of the teachers, Nicole. The timid wife, the headmistress, is just a passive one resigned to her fate. All these changes one day when Nicole turns up with a black eye, allegedly beaten up by Michel.
The two women scorned plot a devious plan to kill off the headmaster during the long weekend. Christina, the timid one, is literally steamrolled to be a reluctant accomplice in this exercise. She lured him to Nicole's out-of-town apartment by informing him that she wants a divorce. When he turns up to persuade her, he is drugged and drown in a bathtub. His 'body' is brought back to the schoolyard and dumped into the school pool, made to look like a suicide.
Things get complicated when the headmaster's body fails to float. If fact, it is nowhere to found even when it is drained for another reason. To turn the notch a step further, a student was seen punished after receiving marching orders from the 'headmaster'! All these proved too much for the weak-hearted Christina, the meek wife. A retired police detective ala Columbo (chomping on an unburnt cigar donned a trench coat asking annoying questions repeatedly) takes an interest in the case when Christina, after being coaxed by Nicole, turns up at the local morgue to identify a body which turned out not to be of the headmaster, naturally.
Staying loyal to the director's plea not to divulge the ending of the story, you have to watch the film in entirety to appreciate why it had been labelled as one of the scariest movies of all time. It is comparable to Hitchcock's classics.
Nowadays, abuse does not just encompass physical and sexual kind. In development psychology, a different type of abuse is often quoted as having a detrimental effect on the maturing mind. One with no physical evidence but is said to leave a mark so deep that it may just jostle the living daylight out of a person's future. They call it psychological abuse. The constant advice (imparting of knowledge or life experience or nagging as the receiver perceives it) is so painful that living seems not worth it!I find this a little perplexing. I thought what does not kill a person, only makes him stronger! And how is one to know his real potential if he does not scrape the barrel's bottom? The world would have no Michael Jackson if his father just gave in to his whims and fancies of the unknowing child who does not know the purpose of repeated and gruelling training. Nevertheless, that is the recipe of modern parenting for you - a liberal dose of mollycoddling, sprinkled with helicopter parenting to cushion the trauma of a fall and avoidance of negative vibes at all cost!
This classic French psychological thriller is said to rival Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. Apparently, Hitchcock failed to secure this film's rights just a few hours before it was taken up.
This film has nothing to do with parenting but all to do with psychological abuse.
An uncouth headmaster, Michel Delassalle, is running a boarding school with an iron fist. The school is actually owned by his wife, Christina, but he runs like his own, shoving his orders to the teachers and punishing the students indiscriminately. He even has the gall openly to have an affair with one of the teachers, Nicole. The timid wife, the headmistress, is just a passive one resigned to her fate. All these changes one day when Nicole turns up with a black eye, allegedly beaten up by Michel.
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| The devoted wife and temptress |
Things get complicated when the headmaster's body fails to float. If fact, it is nowhere to found even when it is drained for another reason. To turn the notch a step further, a student was seen punished after receiving marching orders from the 'headmaster'! All these proved too much for the weak-hearted Christina, the meek wife. A retired police detective ala Columbo (chomping on an unburnt cigar donned a trench coat asking annoying questions repeatedly) takes an interest in the case when Christina, after being coaxed by Nicole, turns up at the local morgue to identify a body which turned out not to be of the headmaster, naturally.
Staying loyal to the director's plea not to divulge the ending of the story, you have to watch the film in entirety to appreciate why it had been labelled as one of the scariest movies of all time. It is comparable to Hitchcock's classics.
A man wrote to Alfred Hitchcock: "Sir, After seeing 'Diabolique,' my daughter was afraid to take a bath. Now she has seen your 'Psycho' and is afraid to take a shower. What should I do with her?" Hitchcock replied: "Send her to the dry cleaners."
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