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.
However, three weeks into a problem-ridden shoot—technical issues; personality clashes; Reggiani’s leaving the film, citing depression; and the director himself suffering a heart attack—the project was abandoned, and Clouzot never made another. All that remained were 185 canisters of film sitting in a garage.
Enter Serge Bromberg, a French film restorer and producer, who in 2005 stumbled upon Clouzot’s lost treasure. With the help of filmmaker Ruxandra Medrea, he cobbled together rushes, casting takes, and extra exterior sequences to make a Frankenstein adaptation of Inferno—part making-of documentary, part ode to a film that never was, and part homage to a director whose need for perfection got the best of him.
The completed Inferno movie won a César Award (France’s equivalent of an Oscar) for best documentary that year, catapulting Bromberg to a literary celebrity possible only in Paris. Heralded as the “Indiana Jones of lost film,” Bromberg has gone on to discover and restore much of the world’s film patrimony, including works by Keaton, Méliès, and Chaplin.
Bromberg, 62, often clad in the standard indy-producer black blazer and oxford, has never been shy about claiming a weakness for old films. In a 2010 article for Le Parisien, he recounted that while enrolled in business school with the hopes of eventually creating a film-production company, “I was too attracted by all these forgotten films in basements and attics. I really wanted to reveal the hidden and delicious face of cinema.”
Now, as with Clouzot before him, Bromberg’s maniacal film obsession has led to his own demise.
Line of Fire
Last November, Bromberg was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by a correctional court in the Paris suburb of Créteil due to his involvement in a fire that killed two people in an eight-floor residential-apartment building at 30 Rue de la Liberté, in the eastern Paris suburb of Vincennes.
As reported by TVMonde5, investigators said approximately 1,364 to 1,935 film reels weighing between 2.5 and 3.6 tons were stored in the building’s basement, under Bromberg’s care, without proper cooling or fire protection. Some of the films were made of highly flammable cellulose nitrate (outlawed since 1952), and during a heat-wave-soaked night in early August 2020, they caught fire.
Bromberg was sentenced to five years in prison, four of them suspended, with the remaining year to be served under house arrest. In addition, Bromberg’s production company must pay a fine equivalent to approximately $160,000.
“I’m the only one responsible for this drama. I’m unpardonable. I can barely ask to be forgiven,” a contrite Bromberg told the court, his back to the audience.
“Murderer!” cried one of the victim’s family members at the moment of sentencing.
Although he acknowledged his role in the fire, Bromberg maintained he never intended to store the films permanently at the Vincennes address—“It was a temporary solution,” he said, “while I waited for the C.N.C. [France’s Centre National du Cinéma] to store it.”
Bromberg’s lawyer, Emmanuel Mercinier, agreed the stock would have been less if the C.N.C. had recovered the film, but admits that Bromberg “had an obligation.... And the fact remains Serge Bromberg had to find a solution.” However, Mercinier challenged the notion that Bromberg “killed people to save money,” countering that “alternative solutions do not exist” for this type of film, and that storage companies only accept “small quantities over a small period.” (Mercinier did not respond to AIR MAIL’s request for comment.)
Serge Bromberg has been heralded as the “Indiana Jones of lost film.”
The prosecution countered that if anyone knew the dangers associated with storing film, it would be Bromberg, a reputable preservationist who’d also served as the director of the Annecy Film Festival. “He knew the risks,” said one of the attorneys.
Testimony by witnesses and family members described in lurid detail how one of the victims, a man in his 50s, jumped from the fourth floor of the building, crashing through a firefighter’s ladder before hitting the ground and dying on the scene. Another woman, aged 69, remained trapped in her apartment, where she burned to death. Her daughter testified at the trial holding a ring of keys, the only souvenir that remained of her mother.
Bromberg’s neighbors said they’d complained about the film canisters being stocked in the building’s garage and had alerted the management. “We were very worried to have these films right underneath our feet and we signaled this worry several times,” said a neighbor.
Fighting Fire with Fire
Toward the end of the trial, Bromberg’s self-portrayal as an obsessive film nerd—one who, in his own words, “never imagined such a thing could happen”—was suddenly torpedoed by the prosecution.
For years prior to the fire, prosecutors revealed, Bromberg, as a side hustle, had organized film conferences and screenings of some of his cinematic finds, often playing the piano onstage as an improvised soundtrack to the silent versions. Afterward, with a showman’s flair, Bromberg would burn clips of film with a lighter, as a way to show the audience how flammable the reel was. The show, entitled Retour de Flamme (Backfire), was often sold out.
As with Henri-Georges Clouzot before him, Bromberg’s maniacal film obsession has now led to his own demise.
The prosecutor Elsa Crozatier submitted a series of videos, two of which showed Bromberg’s pyrotechnics performance. Le Monde reported that a third was taken on September 7, 2020, just weeks after the fatal fire, and featured Bromberg presenting one of his company’s recent films. When the person introducing him recalls his past ritual of burning cellulose nitrate, Bromberg fails to mention the Vincennes fire nor the dangers associated with that type of film. Instead, his response is: “I am a victim of my passions.”
“Now, remember,” Bromberg says in another video, “this [film] can ignite at 50 degrees centigrade, so if you leave a bunch of film in the back seat of your car, for example, get ready to start looking for a new model! Awesome!”
While many of those in attendance at the trial saw Bromberg’s levity before the fire, and tone-deaf obliviousness after it, as callousness, the defense countered that his behavior was a form of denial. For two years, Mercinier, said, Bromberg never once mentioned the fire or the upcoming trial to close friends or associates. “Because until recently, he hadn’t yet grasped the magnitude of what had happened,” said Mercinier.
The families of those who died and were injured in the fire weren’t convinced. “My son died, hitting the ground after throwing himself out of a window,” said one of the victims’ mothers during the trial. “He burned, like your reels, Mr. Bromberg. I will continue to live with a dead child.”
“I am a victim of my passions.”
The Vincennes film fire isn’t the first to rock Paris. In 1897, an explosion of cellulose nitrate at a charity event called the Bazar de la Charité caused the death of 140 people, most notably Sophie Charlotte, the Duchess of Alençon and sister of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria.
Quentin Tarantino’s World War II film, Inglourious Basterds, also touched on cellulose nitrate’s power. In one of the movie’s final scenes, a Parisian cinema owner uses a pile of film canisters to engulf the theater in flames, killing everyone inside, including high-ranking members of the Third Reich.
In an older interview, Bromberg stated that 70 percent of the world’s old films are still missing, and since many are in the throes of decomposition, he felt that he was in a race against the clock to find them.
As you watch Inferno and its kaleidoscope of disorienting images, morphing shadows, and morbid time lapses, it’s hard not to associate the film with its cursed past. Its director died in obscurity. Its star later committed suicide. Now the man who found the film and restored it has been convicted of manslaughter.
Perhaps Serge Bromberg should have heeded Indiana Jones’s advice at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when he yelled at Karen Allen’s character not to look. Some films are better left untouched.
John von Sothen is a Paris-based writer, a frequent contributor to AIR MAIL, and the author of Monsieur Mediocre