Many consider Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished 1964 film, Inferno, to be a haunted masterpiece. Starring Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani, it was destined to be Clouzot’s magnum opus, a film armed with an unlimited Hollywood budget and a director (coming off of Diabolique and The Wages of Fear) operating at the peak of his powers.
Inspired by Fellini’s 8 ½, which had come out just the year before, Clouzot wanted to tell an unconventional story of a couple who take over the management of a small provincial hotel only for the husband to be consumed by jealousy and madness. Like Fellini, Clouzot planned to break from the classical sense of narration by alternating the couple’s story in black-and-white with psychedelic scenes shot in color, or with the film’s negative, as a way to capture the delirium of Reggiani’s character.
