Le Corbeau (The Raven)
Directed by Georges-Henri Clouzot
Written by Louis Chavance and Georges-Henri Clouzot
1943/France
Continental Films
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
[box] Dr. Vorzet: You think that people are all good or all bad. You think that good means light and bad means night? But where does night end and light begin? Where is the borderline? Do you even know which side you belong on? [/box]
This brilliant thriller managed to make all sides mad in Occupied France.
Dr. Remy Germain (Pierre Fresnay) came not so long ago to practice in a small French town and specializes in difficult deliveries. He has performed a few where he saved the mother at the cost of the baby, not always the orthodox outcome. He is also very friendly with the elderly local psychiatrist’s young wife, a friendship which her sister roundly disapproves.
People start recieving ugly poison pen letters signed by “The Raven”. They start out as a campaign against Germain, calling him an abortionist and adulterer. The letters build to the point where all the dirty secrets of the townspeople are revealed, escalating to a climax when a patient at the hospital is told by The Raven he has terminal cancer and commits suicide. The town is driven to a kind of mass hysteria. The investigation, led by the psychiatrist who is also a handwriting expert, turns up many suspects. Is it the psychiatrist’s sister-in-law, a cold Puritanical nurse? Is it the young postal clerk who regularly dips into the till? How about the crippled woman Germain has a one-night stand with? Clouzot keeps you guessing until the final five minutes of the story.
Clouzot is a genius at portraying the dark underbelly of life. It’s just a marvel to watch how he can take a simple prop and make it look completely sinister. Although I thought the film dragged a bit in parts, it remained suspenseful. I love Fresnay and all the other performances are appropriately menacing.
According to Wikipedia, Le Corbeau generated controversy from the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church considered the film “painful and hard, constantly morbid in its complexity”. The Vichy press dubbed it the antithesis of the Révolution nationale and demanded it be banned due to its immoral values. The anti-Nazi resistance press considered it Nazi propaganda because of its negative portrayal of the French populace. Two days before the release of Le Corbeau, the German-owned Continental films fired Clouzot.
Personally, I consider this film less an allegory than entirely consistent with the tenor of misanthropy present in all of Clouzot’s work. Somehow that misanthropy only adds to the delicious thrills delivered by the European Master of Suspense. Recommended.
Trailer (no subtitles)
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