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| Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc in Le Corbeau |
No film that has something to offend everyone can be all bad, right? Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau was made during the German occupation of France, and it managed to alienate both the Vichy regime and the Resistance, and even to be banned after the liberation. To be sure, it's a somewhat unpleasant film, a psychological thriller in which almost everyone is something of a rotter. But at the time, it was subjected to suspicion of being a kind of allegory of the situation in which France's towns found themselves, to be an attack on informing on one's fellow citizens and an undermining of the morale of the populace. Someone in the unnamed village where the film takes place is sending anonymous poison-pen letters to everyone else, exposing the secrets and sins of the townspeople, but especially aiming at Dr. Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), a fairly recent arrival to the town, accusing him of being an illegal abortionist. The letters are signed "Le Corbeau," the crow (or if you prefer an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe, the raven). Germain himself is not an altogether likable character: He's a bit crabby and he's carrying on an affair with both the beautiful wife (Micheline Francey) of the local psychiatrist, Dr. Vorzet (Pierre Larquey), a much older man, and with Denise Saillens (Ginette Leclerc), who sometimes fakes illness to get Germain's attention. The vicious letters cause an uproar, in the middle of which a young man commits suicide. Uncovering the identity of Le Corbeau becomes a pursuit that is doomed not to end well. Clouzot's skill as a director, abetted by cinematographer Nicolas Hayer's manipulation of light and shadow, makes all of this unpleasantness watchable, but it's easy to see why it got under people's skin.
