le corbeau
alan williams, “le corbeau”, le corbeau, dvd booklet, the criterion collection, new york, 2004, p. 2. judith mayne also regards le corbeau as the first french film noir. see le corbeau, university of illinois press, urbana and chicago, 2007, pp. 29, 30 .
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trailer for the 1943 french film le corbeau (the raven). directed by henri - georges clouzot .
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table of contents for le corbeau: the raven, henri - georges clouzot, 1943 / judith mayne .
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le corbeau is directed by henri - georges clouzot and co - written by clouzot and henri chavance. it stars pierre fresnay, ginette leclerc, pierre larquey and micheline francey .
the restaurant at le corbeau serves regional cuisine and it also features a bar. guests may dine on the terrace during the summer. a continental breakfast is served every morning .
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le docteur rémy germain: [ examining denise in his office ] now breathe. [ puts his head against her chest and listens for a few seconds ] le docteur rémy germain: breathe normally. see more »
le corbeau is rather short, but the brief length supports the storyline more than hindering it. we aren' t subjected to countless vapid subplots or random encounters without meaning. rather, every conversation and suspenseful moment expertly leads…
second viewing: may 6, 2018 second review: almost 12 years later, le corbeau is still a remarkable film. clouzot made so many great movies, that this is actually one of the more minor films, in my opinion .
a mysterious writer of poison - pen letters, known only as le corbeau (the raven), plagues a french provincial town, unwittingly exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community’s calm surface. made during the nazi occupation of france, henri - georges clouzot’s le corbeau was attacked by the right - wing vichy regime, the left - wing resistance press, the catholic church, and was banned after the liberation. but some—including jean cocteau and jean - paul sartre—recognized the powerful subtext to clouzot’s anti - informant, anti - gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate clouzot’s directorial reputation after the war. le corbeau brilliantly captures a spirit of paranoid pettiness and self - loathing turning an occupied french town into a twentieth - century salem .
a mysterious writer of poison pen letters, known only as le corbeau (the raven), plagues a french provincial town, unwittingly exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community’s calm surface. made during the nazi occupation of france, henri - georges clouzot’s le corbeau was attacked by the right - wing vichy regime, the left - wing resistance press, the catholic church, and was banned after the liberation. but some—including jean cocteau and jean - paul sartre—recognized the powerful subtext to clouzot’s anti - informant, anti - gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate clouzot’s directorial reputation after the war. le corbeau brilliantly captures a spirit of paranoid pettiness and self - loathing turning an occupied french town into a twentieth - century salem. today it stands as one of french cinemas masterpieces, a dark and subversive study of human nature. essential viewing .
but of course, it makes all the difference in the world who is saying what to whom behind what cloak in occupied france. are you an informant or working for the resistance? more than just sinister gossip, the poison coming from the pen in le corbeau is thematically intended for some and not others operating underground. in short, it’s political. clearly, i was unaware. and i have to think now that the reviewer who called the white ribbon a “distant cousin” to le corbeau was not so unaware, although i still maintain that these cousins are too distant to kiss .
john f. sweets, choices in vichy france: the french under nazi occupation, oxford university press, 1986, p. 43. for some interesting insights concerning the film’s depiction of gender crisis and use of film noir imagery see mayne, le corbeau, pp. 55, 65 - 66, 77 - 78 .
hotel corbeau is just a 6 - minute drive to crochères forest, which is the largest forest in the burgundy region. free public parking is available on site .
see gregory sims, “henri - georges clouzot’s le corbeau: the work of art as will to power”, modern language notes vol. 114, no. 4, 1999, pp. 743 - 779, who views the film as a fascist text. for various opposing views see ehrlich, pp. 177 - 184; alan williams (above citations); eric gans, “clouzot’s cruel crow”, p. o. v. no. 20, 2005, pp. 51 - 58; and judith mayne, “henri - georges clouzot’s le corbeau and the crimes of women”, the journal of twentieth century french studies vol. 4, no. 2, 2000, pp. 319 - 341 .
just this week i watched and reviewed michael haneke’s the white ribbon (2009) and in my review i referred to shirley jackson’s short story, the lottery (1948). now i am commenting on henri - georges clouzot’s film, le corbeau (1943) —which another reviewer has called a “distant cousin” to the white ribbon —and which makes me think of shirley jackson yet again; this time, her short story, the possibility of evil (1965). i categorized the white ribbon as a “poison - in - the - well” piece. others may or may not find this categorization convincing, but there can be no debate that le corbeau is a poison - in - the - pen piece .
le corbeau is the story of a town sent into a state of turmoil and soon trapped in a web of deceit and lies by character assassination. corbeau means one who writes poison pen letters or crow. technically raven is grand corbeau (big crow), but the film always translates le corbeau as the raven so we' ll run with it. one reason the writing by chavance' s and clouzot (clouzot came up as a screenwriter and reworked all the scripts that weren' t his own) works so well is that it only starts out attacking the different person, the new physician in town dr. remy germain (pierre fresnay). remy is also an easy target for the raven' s letters because he is wealthier than perhaps anyone in town, and he' s somewhat effete, detached, supercilious, and possibly surreptitious. the raven' s letters expose germain as a lecher and abortionist who has blamed marie corbin (helena manson) for stealing morphine that he himself took, and makes a practice of screwing his patients .
le corbeau has been both attacked as anti - french propaganda and praised as the authentic voice of french cinema, but what is certainly true is that it captured the foul dog - eat - dog french wartime mood of denunciation that swept the country. unsurprisingly, it is hardly one of clouzot' s most popular films, particularly in france, where patriots have condemned it bitterly .
the dictation, supervised by vorzet, although inconclusive, has thrown some suspicion on denise. shortly after, germain catches her writing him a corbeau letter to announce that she bears his child, and immediately accuses her of having written the others. but in the film' s most moving scene (and its only use of close - ups), denise tells germain to look into her tearful eyes to witness the truth that she is not le corbeau. germain cannot refuse the truth; he and denise decide to keep their child - and we assume they will marry and leave st. - robin together .
certainly the sourest film about the french during the second world war was made during it - and by a frenchman, henri - georges clouzot, who was employed by a nazi production company. le corbeau (1943) depictes a small town torn apart by poison - pen letters. in this town, a purported microcosm for france under occupation, everybody has a shameful secret - and a motive for denouncing their neighbours .
if you' re looking for a reason to believe the worst about our species, clouzot is the director to watch. his bleak worldview and paranoid claustrophobic atmosphere were influential on the american film noirs that would become low budget staples a few years after le corbeau was released. hitchcock' s films were lighter and more playful than clouzot' s to the point where hitch can be seen as a cheerful cherub in comparison .
we have stayed at le corbeau before and chose to return for our overnight stop on the way to the alps. the proprietress is a lovely charming lady who was so helpful to me as i had inadvertently booked the wrong date! apart from that, the hotel is an old building which is being tastefully refurbished and the food is just wonderful. everything is spotlessly clean and i have no hesitation in recommending this hotel .
“we have stayed at le corbeau before and chose to return for our overnight stop on the way to the alps. the proprietress is a lovely charming lady who was so helpful to me as i had inadvertently booked the wrong date! apart from that, the hotel is an old building which is being tastefully refurbished and the food is just wonderful. everything is spotlessly clean and i have no hesitation in recommending this hotel. ”
눇 we have stayed at le corbeau before and chose to return for our overnight stop on the way to the alps. the proprietress is a lovely charming lady who was so helpful to me as i had inadvertently booked the wrong date! apart from that, the hotel is an old building which is being tastefully refurbished and the food is just wonderful. everything is spotlessly clean and i have no hesitation in recommending this hotel .
even today, those who praise le corbeau as clouzot' s masterpiece speak of its darkness and cynicism, its jaundiced denial of moral certainty. yet my impression is quite different. i see it as a film about trust and love, on the one hand, and the harsh but real necessity of moral judgment on the other. no film more forcefully denounces mob persecution and scapegoating, not to speak of the notorious occupation practice of informing on one' s neighbors through anonymous letters. although anything but a political propaganda piece, le corbeau is an affirmation of humanistic values antithetical to those of the german occupiers and their vichy collaborators. and in its affirmation of these values, it accepts the necessity, obvious in wartime but rarely faced so honestly, of violent extralegal means, means whose obvious interpretation in 1943 - yet no one to my knowledge has ever suggested it - is as an apology for violent acts of resistance .
but le corbeau ain’t just any old film. this taut, tightly wound 91 - minute feature is a despairing and morally complex look at the things that damaged people living in a dangerous time will do. that it is a thinly - veiled examination of the many difficulties of living in vichy france is the common wisdom today, though that allegorical aspect of the film seems to have initially slipped past the folks at continental - film who okayed the movie and the censors who allowed its release. so there’s some interesting meta - criticism going on w / r / t the film in that folks wonder about the morality of taking money from the nazis while making a final product that is essentially anti - nazi. ’tis a real head scratcher, that one. but in the end, for any film of this sort to succeed, it must work at both literal and allegorical levels, and le corbeau most certainly does that .
i think that my review proves yours. the conditions under which it was made and the circumstance in which it was originally screened—this is indeed the key to fully appreciating le corbeau. while i continue to feel that the film is not endogenously profound, the exogenous factors you observe have taken my sorry ass to school with respect to the clandestine communications it portrays. i absorbed from the film a general philosophic—and therefore, not especially deep—investigation about people in general passing information and disinformation .
both the left (resistance) and the right (vichy) agreed in finding le corbeau demoralizing and
anti - french
: unfounded rumors were spread that the film was shown throughout germany as a demonstration of the decadence of french society. on the contrary, the germans understandably disliked the film for its theme of anonymous letters; ironically, it was only because it was produced by a german company that it ever got past the censors. as a result, despite its immediate box - office success, le corbeau was pulled from the movie theaters only three weeks after its release; it has led a checkered career ever since. despite its masterful direction and acting, its powerful characterizations, and the extraordinary density of its social commentary, le corbeau has never achieved the revered status of such films as renoir' s la grande illusion or carné' s les enfants du paradis. nor has clouzot ever received his due as the creator of some of the most distinctive and powerful films ever made. the filmmakers and theoreticians of the nouvelle vague treated renoir and cocteau with reverence and carné with respect, and reserved a special admiration for alfred hitchcock, the subject of a book - length study by eric rohmer, longtime editor - in - chief of cahiers du cinéma; clouzot, although sometimes (in my opinion, mistakenly) called the
french hitchcock
for his suspense films, was considered at best a skillful hack. the eclipse of his reputation is due in large measure to the enormous influence of the nouvelle vague / cahiers du cinema on the french intelligentsia .
denise (ginette leclerc), the supposedly obvious “femme fatale” of le corbeau, condemns the film’s supposed hero, dr germain, in the following terms: “you may be right doctor. but i feel sorry for you. you are what is saddest and strangest… a bourgeois. ” later influenced by another poison pen letter, germain fears that he may be the father of a “degenerate child”. but a close - up of denise not only undermines his contamination by nazi - vichy racial values but also his misreading of a supposed “slut” .
henri georges - clouzot' s le corbeau is a masterwork of suspense. it toys and twists the audience' s perception until we are unsure of which way is right. what clouzot does best, however, is taking the viewer' s expectations and throwing them straight out the window. the traditional tropes and narratives are tossed aside in exchange for a fresher, more intuitive process. the film presents certain evidences as fact, and then proceeds to fly in your face, taking us on an unexpected roller coaster of deception and intrigue .
an important secondary element in le corbeau is the pervasive undercurrent of sexual tension, visible in laura' s frustration with her aging husband, marie corbin' s spinsterish bitterness, denise' s promiscuity, and most interestingly of all, in the sexual awakening of pubescent fourteen - year - old rolande, denise' s niece, whom one of the letters accuses germain of seeking to make his mistress. in the pivotal scene with the swinging lamp, vorzet even claims that germain would sleep with rolande if she seduced him. but if this suggestion of sexual disorder reflects the paranoid world of the corbeau, in rolande' s last appearance on screen we see her smiling as she uses her nascent feminine wisdom to reassure denise that germain will not leave town without her. in the same way as human truth and justice put an end to the social crisis fomented by the letters, the lovers' mature relationship takes over the sexual terrain from rolande' s adolescent longings, as well as from denise' s aimless licentiousness and from laura' s illicit desire for germain that created the corbeau in the first place .
this absence of technique is also the reason his films like le corbeau and les diaboliques succeed so well as mysteries. the problem with so many mysteries is they work under the misconception that the entire purpose of the film is solving the puzzle. this seems to result in the plot becoming nothing more than a series of clues and red herrings, the score becoming a fire alarm to alert us that one of the aforementioned is about to happen, and in the worst entries some pretentious technique being employed that gives away the answer once we pick up on the trick. these all lead to the intelligent viewer being able to solve the mystery, and the end simply reassuring them of their brilliance. while the focus of two doctors in le corbeau becomes getting to the bottom of the mystery, the focus of the viewer is more toward why the town as a whole has eaten this all up and become so out of control. that clouzot is not overly concerned with the outcome greatly enhances the impact of his highly detailed character study, illustrating that anyone could be behind the poison pen letters because the entire population is rotten .
not to take this too seriously though. le corbeau may be far from trite, but it is just as far from profound. the cynicism coming off of the thing is mostly for show. it’s an exercise in style that draws heavily on american noir. there is some wonderful cinematography that achieves this feeling within a provincial french town, which is cool in its own right. one that especially stood out for me is the nurse / nun wearing a flowing black habit and veil, running away from vigilantes in broad daylight against white - washed walls of old stone. “the raven” indeed .
the film’s visual style and characterisation are crucial towards understanding that ambiguity may not be a convenient cloak behind which director and screenwriter chose to hide but essential to depicting the complex nature of existence within an occupied country and how this may affect its inhabitants. ehrlich notes that despite the fact that le corbeau was the most controversial film of this time its style resembled the dominant contemporary trend: “the film’s atmosphere, its sense of self - enclosure and isolation from the world are typical of the ‘isolationist’ tendency of the french school. ” (9) yet, this enclosure may be part of the film’s critical interrogation .
meanwhile, the film satisfies another noir requirement: a dark sense of humor delivered by way of hard - boiled dialogue. for all the suspense and unwholesome interactions, i found myself laughing along the way, and i do believe le corbeau should be appreciated as a form of satire. to call it a “distant cousin” to haneke’s the white ribbon, well, the distance is very, very great, my own middle - man references to shirley jackson notwithstanding. i’ll not pursue this further except to say that haneke appears to have adopted kubrick’s title as the intellectual ice man of cinema…minus the sense of humor .
a particularly unsparing look at humanity and our ability to turn on each other, le corbeau has been dirtied by history from the day it exited the womb. made by the german funded continental films, henri - georges clouzot was banned from making films until 1947 (lifted from its initial lifelong stamp). it was seen as anti - french at the time it was made, it is now seen in a more anti - nazi light and more broadly an anti - people light. the misanthropy is locked and loaded even though room is made for people to find each other and for the guilty to go punished .
context is key to fully appreciate the greatness of henri - georges clouzot’s le corbeau. shot in the first year of the nazi occupation under the watchful eye of german - controlled vichy france, and by logical extension, the film industry, through continental - films (who understood the value of movies as propaganda better than they ?), clouzot’s film had to walk quite a tightrope in order to escape the censors’ scissors. not only that, it had to withstand the attacks of french patriots who viewed clouzot’s willingness to work with the german controlled film institute as proof that he was in the first rank of collaborators: a man who had sold his soul to the devil just so he could continue to make movies .
finally, it comes out that the first letter was written by laura herself in an effort to seduce germain; the others, she claims, were dictated to her by her husband. insisting that laura is insane, vorzet gets germain to sign internment papers, and laura is carted off to a mental hospital in another scene reminiscent of a gestapo abduction. but when germain, on denise' s suggestion, returns to vorzet' s house to discover the truth, he finds vorzet dead at his desk, bleeding onto a final, unfinished corbeau letter; the hospital suicide' s mother, whom we see leaving the house in the final sequence, has cut his throat with her son' s razor. laura was right; vorzet was the corbeau .
le corbeau is based on a real incident, in which the southern town of tulle was subjected between 1917 and 1922 to a series of over 1000 anonymous letters, including pornographic drawings, signed l' oeil du tigre; the scandalous revelations of these letters provoked several suicides. after a lengthy dictation organized by a lyon police doctor and graphologist, the handwriting was discovered to be that of one angèle laval, an amorously frustrated former civil servant; arrested and tried in 1922, she was given a suspended sentence and lived on for another fifty years. a screenplay inspired by l' affaire angèle, originally entitled l' oeil du serpent, was written by louis chavance over the period from 1932 to 1937, then reworked with clouzot in the course of production in 1943 .
though not clouzot' s most accomplished film visually, le corbeau has one exceptional sequence where the suspected raven, marie corbin, flees a mob of angry townspeople. with each edit, the camera alternates between two perspectives. when she' s running from it, it seems to be watching her, chasing her. when she' s running toward it her face is always obscured, in opposition to the high contrast black and white of the rest of the film, which has the look and feel of a film noir except most of it takes place in broad daylight. finally, the noise of the mob becomes overwhelming and we get a close up of her running terrified. the camera isn' t level during the running scenes, it is, well, rather twisted .
the reception in france for the sorrow and the pity contrasts markedly with that accorded to a recent french wartime memoir, michael quint' s strange gardens. this was a french literary triumph of 2000, hailed by le monde as
a jewel that warms the soul
. in britain, the book was less well received: critic boyd tonkin called it
an anodyne crowd - pleaser
.
there is such a thing as objective symbolism. the matching of the still lamp with the moving lamp reflects not only the passage of time but the transition from a world of relativism associated with vorzet to a world of moral certitude exemplified by the mother. germain seems to side with vorzet, and in his subsequent remarks about the corbeau and even about the priority of the mother' s life over the child' s he takes a more measured position than previously. but when the film ends with germain opening the window curtain to show the mother' s departure down the crooked street as vorzet' s blood stains the last letter of the corbeau, we can hardly assert that the film itself is on vorzet' s side, or even germain' s. on the contrary, it shows us that the scourge of the corbeau could be lifted only by the mother' s brutal act, and that more delicate souls like germain in fact depend upon such acts to maintain society' s moral order. if we situate the film within the ethical context defined by the german occupation of france, then just as vorzet' s ambivalence relativizes the guilt of collaboration, the mother' s act cannot but recall the deeds of the resistance .
what' s scary about the film is it not only becomes difficult not to believe the poison letters, it becomes hard to place all that much blame on the raven. every character has their selfish and dishonest antics. denise fakes illness then when that doesn' t work makes herself sick in order to get time alone with dr. germain. rolande extorts money from adults under the premise of getting her out of a jam, and constantly spies on dr. germain. after denise distracts dr. germain from his escape of watching the
innocent
children play, a letter germain received from le corbeau blows off the windowsill into the playground. a little girl standing against a tree as punishment claims to not have seen it only to pull it out of her pocket as soon as he gives up his search, and begin to read it with a big grin on her face .
note: contents data are machine generated based on pre - publication provided by the publisher. contents may have variations from the printed book or be incomplete or contain other coding. le corbeau contents: acknowlegements? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?. . i synopsis? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?. . 1 introduction? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? . 3 part one: production contexts? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ? 6 part two: the film? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?. 43 part three: reception? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? .. 77 conclusion? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ? 111 le corbeau: credits? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?. 116 henri - georges clouzot: filmography? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? .. 118 bibliography? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? .. 119 appendix: figures? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 126
the moral ambiguity that critics see in le corbeau is not absent, but neither is it the film' s ultimate message. we are offered visions of both germain' s broadened humanity and the mother' s vengeful resolve. the first is more congenial and hopeful, and holds the future promise of a better world, but it relies on the second to put an end to the time of hatred and despair. vorzet, played to perfection by pierre larquey in the supreme acting achievement of a long career, is a highly seductive character whose
demonstration
offers us the noble wisdom of tout comprendre, c' est tout pardonner. yet as we should have learned from our earlier readiness to participate in the townsfolk' s condemnation of the disagreeable marie corbin, séduction n' est pas raison. the truth is not to be found in mere appearances, the film tells us, but in denise' s eyes - and in the mother' s razor .
as you have pointed out, shirley jackson’s possibility of evil, published over two decades after the release of le corbeau, has much in common with clouzot’s film. both are built around the same premise: an anonymous citizen is writing poisonous letters attacking the townspeople’s misdeeds, in the hope that it will lead them to correct the error of their ways. instead, in both story and film it creates a climate of paranoia and dis - ease that spreads like a virus, infecting everyone in it path. at first, the townspeople try to ferret out the epistle - writer, but soon grow frustrated with that, and instead turn their paranoid concerns to the most prominent victim of these insidious attacks, dr. germain. complicating our reaction to these events, as the persistent victim of many of these smears, germain is not a particularly appealing hero. he is cool and aloof, detached and even a little arrogant. and the charges made against him may have merit: germain just might be guilty. and we just might cheer his fall .
truffaut, tavernier and malle also probed wartime dilemmas with honorable fearlessness. truffaut' s the last metro (1980) questioned the value of artistic endeavour during the war. this was not just a matter of truffaut encouraging us to think about the compromises made by such french artists as charles trenet ,
le fou chantant
, who entertained wehrmacht officers at the folies and the gaieté parisienne. rather, truffaut' s film encouraged us to reflect on the suggestion that by continuing to stage plays and concerts in paris, french artists may have contributed to making occupied paris seem normal to its citizens - and that to do so was perhaps morally contemptible .
the suspense in clouzot' s films is generally generated from the relative absence of contrived or filmic qualities. while hitchcock would provide the audience with information the characters themselves didn' t possess - for instance the gas spill in the birds - to get the audience chirping instructions at them, clouzot simply created a corrosive atmosphere where you knew the humans would get themselves into much trouble. the thing is, you didn' t know which wrong action or miscalculation would lead to their demise, so there was no relief. certainly that was the case in his most successful suspense, le salaire de la peur (the wages of fear) where the main characters could be blown up at the slightest bump because their job was transporting a truckload of nitroglycerine .
but the critics inevitably pass over the contrasting scene that follows. vorzet departs, leaving germain in the room. as the lamp continues to swing, clouzot signals the passage of time by dissolving in a superimposed image of the lamp having come to rest. we tilt down to see germain in the morning, asleep with his head on the teacher' s desk, having clearly spent the night in the classroom. he is awakened by the arrival of the suicide' s mother, who tells him she is now working as a cleaning - lady at the school, ominously shows him her son' s razor, and informs him that she has a good idea of the identity of the corbeau but is waiting to be absolutely sure before taking action. germain expresses shock, but she is unmoved .
the best - known scene in the film, which provides the key to its overall message, is also the most misunderstood. vorzet confronts germain in a schoolroom at night. germain affirms his moral reprobation for the corbeau and declares his certitude in knowing right from wrong. vorzet, accusing germain of being just as contaminated by the letters as the rest of st. - robin, counters with a little demonstration. the two doctors stand in front of a globe; the room is lit by a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. vorzet pushes the light fixture so that it swings back and forth, casting its moving shadow on the globe (on which europe is visible) as he claims that the boundary between good and evil is similarly unstable. when germain tries to grab the bulb to stop its swinging, he burns his fingers, whereupon vorzet announces that his demonstration is conclusive: moral truth cannot be grasped by mere mortals .
our situation as clouzot' s spectators is judiciously balanced. with respect to the satiric elements of the film - the mutual blackmail of the chief doctor and the bursar, the hypocritical storekeeper who abandons germain for another doctor because of the letters, the postmaster taking for himself a corbeau letter addressed to his wife - we stand back ironically. but as regards the plot' s driving enigma - discovering the author of the letters - we are put in the same position as the other characters, particularly germain, and are induced to jump to the same conclusions, suspecting first marie corbin, then denise, never vorzet. rather than being terrorized along with the victim, as in a film noir, or repelled by the mob, as in lang' s fury or duvivier' s postwar panique, we become part of the persecuting crowd. yet there is no final lynching to pin on us. like the good doctor, we learn that those we suspected were innocent. the guilty party, whom we presumably have not suspected, is indeed punished, but not by
us
; the mother, half - hidden by a veil, dons in the film' s last shot the black plumage of the crow .
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for most of its history, french cinema has undergone periodic upheavals characterized by massive changes in many areas—personnel, economics, typical film style and content, and so on. the german occupation resulted in perhaps the most striking of t…
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stanislas hassler blazes the development of modern art in his gallery, packed with works of surprising shapes, colours and textures, and where exhibitions turn into media events. gilbert... see full summary »
an aging, world - weary gangster is double - crossed and forced out of retirement when his best friend is kidnapped and their stash of eight stolen gold bars demanded as ransom .
in a decrepit south american village, four men are hired to transport an urgent nitroglycerine shipment without the equipment that would make it safe .
a gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in .
henri - georges clouzot' s unfinished masterpiece, l' enfer (1964), is reconstructed in this film which is part drama and part documentary .
a vicious series of poison - pen letters spreads rumours, suspicion and fear among the inhabitants of a small french town, and one after another, they turn on each other as their hidden secrets are unveiled - but the one secret that no - one can uncover is the identity of the letters' author ...
une petite ville comme il en est tant en france. [ original version ]
the screenplay is based on a true story which took place in tulle (corrèze, france) in the 1920s .
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the drama is set in a french village where some nasty soul has been causing a local uproar by sending poison pen letters to prominent citizens. the prime target is the local doctor with the mysterious past; as the town paranoia increases, it is he who becomes the prime suspect, but in the end, the real culprit, the is revealed. he is the last person any one would have suspected .
clouzot, always a painstaking filmmaker, has constructed a plot of fiendish intricacy whose wild twists implicate one character after another until justice is finally served .
polished, impersonal work, it puts forward little more than a spirit of free - floating misanthropy .
this exposé of a malicious small town in france must be one of the most depressed films to emerge from the period of the german occupation .
clouzot, often called the french hitchcock, is not just a master of suspense but is also most adroit at implicating his audience .
although the story gets a little out of hand in the end, this film possesses a good share of the qualities we seek from a french producer... a tender regard for detail, perfect casting, and simple but thoughtful photography .
recognized now as an early classic of film noir, it was clouzot' s masterpiece of psychological suspense, misinterpreted and reviled by all political viewpoints at the time .
an involving mystery, a bitter portrait of a community at odds with itself and, with its unlikeable characters, stark use of shadows and pessimistic moral outlook, an exemplary forerunner to the whole genre of film noir .
very shrewdly designed to work as a mystery thriller - - complete with red herrings - - and it undeniably holds the viewer' s interest throughout with the mystery .
an absorbing thriller that surprises us with the way its mystery becomes always more gripping and with its pessimistic view of mankind and the rottenness hidden inside all of us - and it came out in a perfect time for that sort of discussion during the german occupation of france .
this was quite a spooky flick. the mystery keeps you guessing even after the movie is over, if you know what i mean. nevertheless, it' s quite entertaining. a little bit of editing would have made it even better .
one of the most controversial films of all time, clouzot could have lost his career for some of this films undertones were it not for support from philosophers and other film makers with some influence. the film is marvelous, tangling a very interesting web of sub plots and philosophies into a thriller that delivers incredible suspense despite the fact the chaos was delivered more through menacing words than acts of violence. i thought i had the culprit, infamously dubbed
the raven
, pegged early on, but clouzot through me a few solid curve balls in the end to leave me doubting until the reveal, which i got wrong. a great thriller and a must see from early french cinema .
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in the village of saint robin, the population receives anonymous letters signed as the raven spreading rumors and accusations. dr. rémy germain, who is having an affair with laura, the wife of the psychiatrist dr. vorzet that works with him at the local hospital, is the main victim of the raven. his affair is disclosed and he is also accused of abortionist. when a patient of the hospital commits suicide after receiving a letter telling that his cancer is terminal, the loathed nurse marie corbin is arrested since people believe she is the raven. but soon there are other letters and dr. vorzet tries to identify who might be the notorious raven .
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styles of substance: the extraordinary image: orson welles, alfred hitchcock, stanley kubrick, and the reimagining of cinema, by robert p. kolker
as evelyn ehrlich recognises, the issue of whether occupation films may be read as either pro - vichy (unless they are blatantly propagandist) or pro - resistance is highly problematic. direct causal connections are impossible to detect and directors often
hid behind the formal beauty of their mise - en - scene and the elegant construction of their screenplays as if to draw a curtain between their ideas and anyone in the audience who might be offended by those ideas. censorship did not determine the new styles and subjects that emerged in the 1940s; rather it helped promote a tendency that was already gaining currency. (6 )
as judith mayne observes, appearances in this film are deceptive and “the woman who looks like a vichy poster for womanhood” acts like a lunatic while her supposedly guilty and sexually repressed sister - in - law becomes the victim of mob rule. by contrast, in one of the most revealing close - ups in the film, denise asks germain to look into her eyes so that he can directly perceive that she is not a guilty woman. as opposed to scenes in the film showing people looking at each other and the point - of - view image showing rolande spying on germain through the key - hole of his door, this shot argues for the importance of direct perception rather than indirect, prejudicial, misperception .
alan williams, “the raven and the nanny”, dead ringers: the remake in theory and practice, ed. jennifer forrest and leonard r. koos, state university of new york press, new york, 2002, p. 152 .
for the role of this period in postwar french history see evelyn ehrlich, cinema of paradox: french filmmaking under the german occupation, columbia university press, new york, 1985, pp. 173 - 177; and edward baron turk, child of paradise: marcel carné and the golden age of french cinema, harvard university press, cambridge, massachusetts, 1989, pp. 347 - 350 .
“france of the new springtime must be the creation of the young. ” marc bloch, strange defeat: a statement of evidence written in 1940, trans. gerard hopkins, oxford university press, london, 1949, p. 175.
le corbeau ( the raven ) is a 1943 french film directed by henri-georges clouzot and starring pierre fresnay , micheline francey and pierre larquey . the film is about a french town where a number of citizens receive anonymous letters containing libelous information , particularly targeting an abortion doctor . the mystery surrounding the letters eventually escalates into violence . the film caused serious problems for its director after world war ii as it had been produced by continental films , a german production company established near the beginning of the occupation of france , and because the film had been perceived by the underground and the communist press as vilifying the french people . because of this , clouzot was initially blocked for life from directing in france and the film too was suppressed , although both bans only lasted until 1947 . the film was remade as the 13th letter ( 1951 ) by otto preminger . 
le corbeau (the raven) is a 1943 french film directed by henri-georges clouzot and starring pierre fresnay, micheline francey and pierre larquey. the film is about a french town where a number of citizens receive anonymous letters containing libelous information, particularly targeting an abortion doctor. the mystery surrounding the letters eventually escalates into violence. the film caused serious problems for its director after world war ii as it had been produced by continental films, a german production company established near the beginning of the occupation of france, and because the film had been perceived by the underground and the communist press as vilifying the french people. because of this, clouzot was initially blocked for life from directing in france and the film too was suppressed, although both bans only lasted until 1947. the film was remade as the 13th letter (1951) by otto preminger.
le corbeau (the raven) is a 1943 french film directed by henri-georges clouzot and starring pierre fresnay, micheline francey and pierre larquey. the film is about a french town where a number of citizens receive anonymous letters containing libelous information, particularly targeting an abortion doctor. the mystery surrounding the letters eventually escalates into violence. the film caused serious problems for its director after world war ii as it had been produced by continental films, a german production company established near the beginning of the occupation of france, and because the film had been perceived by the underground and the communist press as vilifying the french people. because of this, clouzot was initially blocked for life from directing in france and the film too was suppressed, although both bans only lasted until 1947. the film was remade as the 13th letter (1951) by otto preminger.