Henri-Georges Clouzot's L'Enfer: Modern cinema at the crossroads of the arts

Based on the surviving rushes and screenplays for the film, this article seeks to reconstruct Clouzot's unfinished L'Enfer (1964) and appraise the artistic influences that shaped the project. It is argued that, contrary to the Nouvelle Vague, who sought to establish cinema as an autonomous art form, Clouzot seeks new possibilities of cinematic expression through interart dialogue.
Looking first at the influence Proust's Recherche had on the director's unconventional treatment of time and memory, we proceed to examine how he appropriates the experiments of the historical avant-garde, kinetic art and experimental music before examining the film's afterlife in two related works: Clouzot's La Prisonnière (1968) and Chabrol's L'Enfer (1993).