#Boileau Narcejac

[bernamegeh]

Boileau Narcejac Kimdir

Boileau-Narcejac, Fransız polisiye edebiyatında önemli bir yere sahip iki yazarın oluşturduğu bir yazarlık ikilisidir.Pierre Boileau (1906-1989) ve Thomas Narcejac (1908-1998) tarafından kurulan bu ortaklık, özellikle gerilim ve suç romanları alanında dikkat çekmiştir.İkilinin yazıları, psikolojik gerilim unsurları ve beklenmedik olay örgüleri ile ünlüdür.Pierre Boileau, Paris’te doğdu ve genç…

[creepynostalgy]

Véra Clouzot and Simone Signoret on set of Les Diaboliques (1955)

[addictivecontradiction]

Les yeux sans visage, 1960

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac - The Living and The Dead - Arrow - 1965

[watcher-in-the-woods]

Diabolique (Les Diaboliques, 1955)

Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot Written by Jérôme Géronimi and Henri-Georges Clouzot

Based on She Who Was no More, by Boileau-Narcejac

[screamscenepodcast]

It's been a long time since your hosts have travelled to France! This week we cover LES YEUX SANS VISAGE (1960) aka EYES WITHOUT A FACE from director Georges Franju!

Based on the Jean Redon novel, the film stars Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli and Édith Scob. It delivers French New Wave horror while keeping you at arm's length -- but will that work in its favour?

Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 27:26; Discussion 35:33; Ranking 57:43

[7r0773r]

Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac, translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury

At two he was waiting at the Etoile. She was always punctual.

'Ah!' he exclaimed. You're in black today.'

'I love black. If I had my own way I'd wear nothing else.'

'Why? It's a bit mournful, isn't it?'

'Not at all. On the contrary, it gives value to everything; it makes all one's thoughts more important and obliges one to take oneself seriously.'

'And if you were in blue, or green?'

'I don't know. I might think myself a river or a poplar... When I was little, I thought colours had mystical properties. Perhaps that's what made me want to paint.'

She took his arm, with an abandon that almost submerged him in a wave of tenderness.

'I've tried my hand at painting too,' he said. 'The trouble is, my drawing's always so weak.'

What does that matter? It's the colour that counts.'

'I'd love to see your paintings.'

'They're not worth much. You couldn't make head or tail of them: they're dreams really... Do you dream in colour?'

'No. Everything's grey. Like a photograph.'

'Then you couldn't understand. You're one of the blind!'

She laughed and squeezed his arm to show him she was only teasing.

'Dreams are so much more beautiful than the stuff they call reality,' she went on. 'Imagine a profusion of interweaving colours which penetrate right into you, filling you so completely that you become like one of those insects which make themselves indistinguishable from the leaf they’re resting on. . . Every night I dream of… of the other country.’

‘You too!’ (pp. 63-64)

[brokehorrorfan]

Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection will be released on November 26 via Universal. The 4K Ultra HD + Digital set collects six of the Master of Suspense's classic thrillers: Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds.

Limited to 5,150, the six-disc collection is housed in premium book-style packaging featuring artwork by Tristan Eaton along with photos, bios, and trivia.

The uncut version of Psycho is included. Special features are detailed below.

1954's Rear Window is written by John Michael Hayes (To Catch a Thief), based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder." James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr star.

Rear Window special features:

Audio commentary by Hitchcock’s Rear Window: The Well-Made Film author John Fawell

Rear Window Ethics - 2000 documentary

Conversation with Screenwriter John Michael Hayes

Pure Cinema: Through the Eyes of The Master

Breaking Barriers: The Sound of Hitchcock

Masters of Cinema

Hitchcock/Truffaut - Audio recording from filmmaker François Truffaut’s in-depth interview with director Alfred Hitchcock about Rear Window

Production photo gallery

Theatrical trailer

Re-release trailer narrated by James Stewart

A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his apartment window and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

1955's To Catch a Thief is written by John Michael Hayes (Rear Window), based on David Dodge’s 1952 novel of the same name. Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, and John Williams star.

To Catch a Thief special features:

Audio commentary by Hitchcock historian Dr. Drew Casper

Filmmaker Focus: Leonard Maltin on To Catch a Thief

Behind the Gates: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly

A retired jewel thief sets out to prove his innocence after being suspected of returning to his former occupation.

1958's Vertigo is written by Alec Coppel (No Highway in the Sky) and Samuel A. Taylor (Sabrina), based on Boileau-Narcejac’s 1954 novel The Living and the Dead. James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, and Henry Jones star.

Vertigo special features:

Audio commentary by filmmaker William Friedkin (The Exorcist)

Obsessed with Vertigo: New Life for Hitchcock’s Masterpiece

Partners In Crime: Hitchcock’s Collaborators

Saul Bass: Title Champ

Edith Head: Dressing the Master’s Movies

Bernard Herrmann: Hitchcock’s Maestro

Alma: The Master’s Muse

Foreign censorship ending

100 Years of Universal: The Lew Wasserman Era

Hitchcock/Truffaut - Audio recording from filmmaker François Truffaut’s in-depth interview with director Alfred Hitchcock about Vertigo

Theatrical trailer

Restoration theatrical trailer

A former police detective juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with a hauntingly beautiful woman.

1959's North by Northwest is written by Ernest Lehman (The Sound of Music, West Side Story). Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, and Jessie Royce Landis star.

North by Northwest special features:

Audio commentary by writer Ernest Lehman

North by Northwest: Cinematography, Score, and the Art of the Edit

Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest

The Master’s Touch: Hitchcock’s Signature Style

North by Northwest: One for the Ages

A Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock

A New York City advertising executive goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and falls for a woman whose loyalties he begins to doubt.

1960's Psycho is written by Joseph Stefano (The Outer Limits), based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same name. Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire, and Janet Leigh star.

Psycho special features:

Original uncut and standard re-releases version of the film

The Making of Psycho

The Making of Psycho audio commentary with Alfred Hitchcock and The Making of Psycho author Stephen Rebello

Psycho Sound

In The Master’s Shadow: Hitchcock’s Legacy

Newsreel Footage: The Release of Psycho

The Shower Scene: With and Without Music

The Shower Sequence: Storyboards by Saul Bass

The Psycho Archives

Hitchcock/Truffaut - Audio recording from filmmaker François Truffaut’s in-depth interview with director Alfred Hitchcock about Psycho

Posters and ad gallery

Lobby card gallery

Behind-the-scenes photo gallery

Production photo gallery

Psycho theatrical trailers

Psycho re-release trailer

A secretary on the run for embezzlement takes refuge at a secluded motel owned by a repressed man and his overbearing mother.

1963's The Birds is written by Evan Hunter (High and Low), based on Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 short story of the same name. Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, and Veronica Cartwright star.

The Birds special features:

The Birds: Hitchcock’s Monster Movie

All About The Birds

Original ending

Deleted scene

Tippi Hedren’s screen test

The Birds is coming (Universal International Newsreel)

Suspense Story: National Press Club hears Hitchcock (Universal International Newsreel)

100 Years of Universal: Restoring the Classics

100 Years of Universal: The Lot

Hitchcock/Truffaut - Audio recording from filmmaker François Truffaut’s in-depth interview with director Alfred Hitchcock about Vertigo

Theatrical trailer

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

Pre-order Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection.

[take-me-to-valhalla]

how it started: I'm gonna have a go at the Arsène Lupin books, they sound fun!

how it's going: I'm gonna have to find the Boileau-Narcejac pastiches. And the Sherlock Lupin & I children series. And Lupin III

[creepynostalgy]

Véra Clouzot and Henri-Georges Clouzot on set of Les Diaboliques (1955)

[addictivecontradiction]

Les yeux sans visage, 1960

[byneddiedingo]

Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Fahey, and Kim Delaney in Body Parts (Eric Red, 1991)

Cast: Jeff Fahey, Lindsay Duncan, Kim Delaney, Zakes Mokae, Brad Dourif, John Walsh, Paul Ben-Victor, Peter Murnik. Screenplay: Patricia Herskovic, Joyce Taylor, Eric Red, Norman Snider, based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Cinematography: Theo van de Sande. Production design: Bill Brodie. Editing: Anthony Redman. Music: Loek Dikker. 

How can a movie with a car chase, a fight in a barroom, and an abundance of gore turn out so dull? Body Parts is based on an old trope, that of severed members taking on a life of their own. Adaptations of W.W. Jacobs's 1902 story "The Monkey's Paw" are so numerous they have a Wikipedia page of their own and Maurice Renard's 1920 novel Les Mains d'Orlac, about a concert pianist who receives the transplanted hands of a murderer, has been filmed several times, including Robert Wiene's 1924 silent The Hands of Orlac and Karl Freund's 1935 Mad Love, starring Peter Lorre. The many adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein also play on the notion of reanimated body parts. But it's not that the idea behind Eric Red's movie has been done to death, so to speak, it's that Red and the various screenwriters who worked on the movie find so little new and interesting to do with it. It's adapted from a 1965 novel, Choice Cuts, by the writing team known as Boileau-Narcejac, who provided the source material for some much better movies: Diabolique (aka Les Diaboliques, Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955) and Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958). The acting isn't bad. As Bill Chrushank, a psychiatrist who receives the arm of a murderer after losing his own in an auto accident, Jeff Fahey does a solid job of suggesting the ways the transplant brings out the worst in what may have been his own latent tendencies to violence. Lindsay Duncan plays the surgeon who does the transplant as a cold-blooded scientist with just a touch of hauteur that turns malevolent when her breakthrough technique is threatened. Brad Dourif overacts a little as the artist who receives the other arm and finds that it actually feeds his imagination and produces darkly disturbing paintings that sell. And Kim Delaney does what she can with the role of Chrushank's wife, who bears the brunt of his emotional transformation. But Red's direction never builds suspense, giving us time to anticipate the shocks we expect the material to provide. There's also a completely unearned "happy ending" that saps any lingering tension from what has gone before. 

[food4dogs]

We went down the rabbit hole with French author duo Boileau-Narcejac.

Never heard of them? Mon dieu! 😱 But you've heard of Vertigo, Hitchcock's famous movie .. right?

Well, that's based on a story by Boileau-Narcejac. So we re-watched Vertigo (1958). Great stuff. And old Hitch actually stuck pretty closely to the novel's storyline. B&N's trademark was a tight meshing of psychology (obsession and delusion in particular) with hard-boiled crime fiction, with just a soupçon of horror for a truly fiendish blend.

After that we naturellement had to watch the other great adaptation of a Boileau-Narcejac novel: Les Diaboliques (1955)!

None of the English title translations ever seem to quite hit that spot (Fiends comes closest), so Diabolique or Les Diaboliques it stays.

We spent hours the next day dissecting the movie. You can watch it as a straight-up thriller - or you can absorb everything Clouzot shows us. Starting with the very early shot of an old Citroen van driving through a puddle, focus on the tire flattening a child's folded paper boat into the mud.

There are many scenes about life in the boarding school, including the dopey misfits that pass for teaching staff. You may think that this is all extra baggage - but once you've reached the ending (what an ending!), wind back and consider how tightly each little 'flavour' scene helps underpin and enrich the story's driving force.

A note about the actors. Simone Signoret (on right) is always rightly acclaimed for her role. But to me, the actor who is the heart (literally - she has a serious heart condition) of this tragic tale is Véra Clouzot, the wife of director Clouzot.

Véra Clouzot starred in 3 of her husband's movies. She died young - aged 46 - in 1960, from a heart attack.

Her portrayal as the girlish, deeply religious wife of her schoolmaster husband is nothing short of revelatory.

A side note: Charles Vanel Plays the bumbling, retired police detective who reportedly served as the inspiration for Columbo. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/diabolique-1995

Les Diaboliques is available on YouTube in a quality transfer with closed caption English subtitles.

[haverwood]

Body Parts Eric Red USA, 1991 ★★★ I started watching knowing Jeff Fahey was in it and went like "hey remember that movie where he loses an arm, gets a transplant from a criminal and starts acting all whacky and deranged?"

Well this was it! Amazing. Huge throwback to the good old (and fun) VHS days.

So anyway, I could've bet money on this being a King adaptation but no, it's based on the "horror novel Choice Cuts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac" (copy/paste from wiki). It's great, fun and gory, with lots of familiar faces in it.

This kind of genre needs a big comeback.

[rondleberg]

The Living and the Dead/Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac :)

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[kinonostalgie]

Diabolique (1955), ( Die Teuflischen ) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, is a masterclass in psychological suspense, blending elements of horror and noir into a chilling tale of betrayal and murder. Adapted from the novel She Who Was No More by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the film is a landmark of the thriller genre, renowned for its eerie atmosphere, nerve-wracking tension, and one of the most shocking endings in cinema history.

Set in a decaying French boarding school, the story follows Christina (Véra Clouzot), the frail yet kind-hearted wife of the sadistic headmaster Michel (Paul Meurisse). Michel’s relentless cruelty extends not only to his wife but also to his mistress, the strong-willed teacher Nicole (Simone Signoret). Despite their unusual dynamic, Christina and Nicole form a deadly alliance, plotting to rid themselves of Michel once and for all. Their carefully orchestrated plan involves drowning him in a bathtub and disposing of his body in the school's murky swimming pool, making it appear as an accident.

But when Michel’s corpse mysteriously vanishes, fear and paranoia take hold. Christina, already fragile, spirals into terror as strange occurrences suggest that Michel may not be as dead as they believed. The slow-burning suspense builds relentlessly, leading to a climactic revelation that remains one of the most unforgettable twists in film history.

Clouzot’s meticulous direction, combined with stark black-and-white cinematography, heightens the film’s oppressive and unsettling atmosphere. Every shadow and lingering silence adds to the tension, keeping the audience in a perpetual state of unease. The film’s psychological complexity and methodical pacing make it a gripping experience, influencing countless thrillers, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).

A cornerstone of psychological horror, Diabolique is a haunting and expertly crafted thriller that lingers in the mind long after the final frame. Its legacy as one of cinema’s greatest suspense films remains undisputed, proving that true terror often lies in the unseen and the unknown.