Le Corbeau (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1943)

Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc in Le Corbeau

Cast: Pierre Fresnay, Ginette Leclerc, Micheline Francey, Héléna Manson, Jeanne Fusier-Gir, Sylvie, Liliane Maigné, Pierre Larquey, Noël Roquevert, Bernard Lancret, Antoine Balpêtré, Jean Brochard. Screenplay: Louis Chavance, Henri-Georges Clouzot. Cinematography: Nicolas Hayer. Set decoration: Andrej Andrejew. Film editing: Marguerite Beaugé. Music: Tony Aubin.

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.

La Main du Diable (Maurice Tourneur, 1943)

Pierre Fresnay in La Main du Diable

Roland Brissot: Pierre Fresnay
Irène: Josseline Gaël
Mélisse: Noël Roquevert
Gibelin: Guillaume de Sax
The Little Man: Palau
Angel: Pierre Larquey
The Diner: André Gabriello
Denis: Antoine Balpêtré
Mme. Denis: Marcelle Rexiane
The Colonel: André Varennes
Duval: Georges Chamarat
The Musketeer: Jean Davy
The Boxer: Jean Despreaux
Maximus Léo: André Bacqué
The Fortune Teller: Gabrielle Fontan

Director: Maurice Tourneur
Screenplay: Jean-Paul Le Chanois
Based on a novel by Gérard de Nerval
Cinematography: Armand Thirard
Production design: Andrej Andrejew
Film editing: Christian Gaudin
Music: Roger Dumas

Maurice Tourneur's son, Jacques Tourneur, is better-known in the United States today because of his work for producer Val Lewton on arty horror films like Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943), as well as the quintessential film noir Out of the Past (1947). Maurice had been a mainstay Hollywood director in the silent era -- director Clarence Brown named him as one of his mentors -- but grew impatient with studio interference and returned to France just as sound was coming in. As a result, La Main du Diable (released in the States as Carnival of Sinners) is probably his best-known film on this side of the Atlantic. It shares with his son's films a stylish approach to horror filmmaking, in which creating a mood takes precedence over shocking the audience. Based on a story by Gérard de Nerval, La Main du Diable is about a struggling artist, Roland Brissot, who buys a talisman, a severed hand in a casket, from a chef, paying only a penny for it. The chef claims that it has made him a success, but that it must be sold again, at less than the price Brissot paid him for it, before the artist dies. Otherwise his soul will be lost forever. Brissot's career takes off, making him rich, and he marries his model, Irène, who had hitherto spurned him. But he soon finds that he's being stalked by a little man in black, the devil himself, who makes it clear that the talisman is the real thing and offers to buy it back from Brissot, who is unable to sell it because there's no coin smaller than the penny he had paid. The artist, enjoying his celebrity and wealth, turns him down, but is then informed that since the buyback offer has been made, the price will double each day. Soon the price has mounted into the millions and Brissot begins to panic, looking for a way to get rid of the hand. He then learns the lineage of the hand, which began several centuries ago with a deal made by a monk named Maximus Léo -- which is also the name Brissot, under the spell of the hand, has been signing to his paintings. If Brissot can reunite the hand with the monk's body, then the deal can be broken. All of this is told in flashback to a crowd at the inn in the French Alps to which Brissot has traveled, the little man in black pursuing him, trying to find the tomb of Maximus Léo. There's not really much horror on display in La Main du Diable, but the film is full of striking visuals, the work of production designer Andrej Andrejew and cinematographer Armand Thirard, and Tourneur directs a capable and colorful cast headed by Pierre Fresnay as Brissot. Since the film was made in occupied France, there are those who think it's a subversive allegory about the price exacted from the French in capitulating to the Nazis.

The Threepenny Opera (G.W. Pabst, 1931)

In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill transformed John Gay's 18th-century Beggar's Opera into Die Dreigroschenoper, one of the most celebrated works to come out of Weimar-era Germany, so when sound came to film it was inevitable that the musical should become a movie. But both Brecht and Weill were unhappy with what Pabst decided to do with both the plot and the songs, so they sued. Brecht lost, but Weill won, with the result that although songs were cut from the film, no new music by other composers was added. Brecht's objections seem to be more about a loss of control over the screenplay, which was written by Léo Lania, Ladislaus Vajda, and Béla Balász, than about any ideological shift: If anything, the ending of the film goes even further left than Brecht's did, with the crooks and corrupt officials of the play becoming bankers. Pabst's direction is sometimes a little slow and stiff: He had never done a musical film before, and the action between songs often seems to lag. But the musical numbers that remain -- which include the well-known "Moritat" or "Mack the Knife," Lotte Lenya's delivery of "The Ballad of the Ship With Fifty Cannons," and "The Song of the Heavy Cannon" -- are well-handled. The cast includes Rudolf Forster as Mackie Messer (i.e. Mack the Knife), Carola Neher as Polly Peachum, Fritz Rasp as Peachum, and Lenya as Jenny. It's striking to see that, as in Fritz Lang's M, made the same year, the underworld is presumed to consist of syndicates of thieves and beggars. The cinematography is by Pabst's frequent collaborator, Fritz Arno Wagner, and the splendid sets are by Andrej Andrejew.