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.

Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

Pierre Fresnay and Erich von Stroheim in Grand Illusion

Maréchal: Jean Gabin
Boeldieu: Pierre Fresnay
Rauffenstein: Erich von Stroheim
Rosenthal: Marcel Dalio
Elsa: Dita Parlo
Cartier: Julien Carette
An Engineer: Gaston Modot
A Teacher: Jean Dasté

Director: Jean Renoir
Screenplay: Charles Spaak, Jean Renoir
Cinematography: Christian Matras
Production design: Eugène Lourié
Music: Joseph Kosma

I have to confess that when I first saw Grand Illusion a long, long time ago, I didn't get what the fuss was about. Why was this mildly amusing prison-escape movie considered one of the greatest films of all time? I mean, I got the general idea: That people are the same everywhere and that what divides us more than nationality is class. But where was the action? Why was there so little suspense? Why don't we get the raucous humor of Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953) or the heroics of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963)? All of which is to say that our expectations have been so shaped by Hollywood to the point that it's difficult for the casual filmgoer to fully appreciate the subtlety of Jean Renoir's treatment of a story about which we have so many preconceptions. The greatness of Grand Illusion consists in Renoir's understanding of people and in his cast's dedication to bringing depth to the roles they are playing. To expect Grand Illusion to give us the full Hollywood measure of laughter, thrills and tears is like expecting War and Peace to stop teaching us history and concentrate entirely on the love life of Natasha Rostova. Like a great novel, Grand Illusion is designed to be savored and reflected upon, not to be watched and swiftly forgotten. The rapport between enemies, i.e., Boeldieu and Rauffenstein, and the tension between allies, i.e., Maréchal and Rosenthal, is what the film is about, and not Boeldieu's self-sacrifice and Rauffenstein's pomposity. It's also why we don't have closure on the stories of Maréchal and Rosenthal: Do they survive the war? Does Maréchal return to Elsa? Does Rosenthal become a victim of the Nazis? It's only because they have become such real characters to us that we even feel a twinge of frustration at not knowing those things. Hence the irony of the film's title. Hollywood gave us illusions. Renoir is determined to let us see the realities behind them.

Marcel Pagnol's Marseille Trilogy (1931, 1932, 1936)

Marius (Alexander Korda, 1931)

Raimu and Pierre Fresnay in Marius

César Olivier: Raimu
Marius: Pierre Fresnay
Honoré Panisse: Fernand Charpin
Fanny: Orane Demazis
Honorine Cabanis: Alida Rouffe
Félix Escartefigue: Paul Dullac
Albert Brun: Robert Vattier
Piquoiseau: Alexandre Mihalesco

Director: Alexander Korda
Screenplay: Marcel Pagnol
Based on a play by Marcel Pagnol
Cinematography: Theodore J. Pahle
Art direction: Alfred Junge, Vincent Korda

Fanny (Marc Allegret, 1932)

Fernand Charpin, Raimu, Pierre Fresnay, and Orane Demazis in Fanny

Cast identical to Marius, except:

Félix Escartefigue: Auguste Mouriès
Aunt Claudine: Milly Mathis
Elzéar: Louis Boulle
Dr. Venelle: Édouard Delmont

Director: Marc Allegret
Screenplay: Marcel Pagnol
Based on a play by Marcel Pagnol
Cinematography: Nikolai Toporkoff
Production design: Gabriel Scognamillo
Music: Vincent Scotto

César (Marcel Pagnol, 1936)

André Fouché and Raimu in César

Cast identical to Fanny, except:

Césariot: André Fouché
Félix Escartefigue: Paul Dullac
Innocent Mangiapan: Marcel Maupin
Elzéar: Thommeray
Pierre Dromard: Robert Bassac
Fernand: Doumel

Director: Marcel Pagnol
Screenplay: Marcel Pagnol
Cinematography: Willy Faktorovitch, Grischa, Roger Ledru

Critics of the auteur theory -- that the director is the true "author" of a film -- point to Marcel Pagnol's Marseille trilogy as a glowing exception: It's the writer's characters and dialogue that carry all three films, even when Pagnol himself is the credited director, as he is in the third film, César. This amounts to nitpicking, I fear. Pagnol was on hand for all three films, even when they were nominally being directed by Alexander Korda and Marc Allegret (neither of them inconsiderable directors), and by all accounts Pagnol was not at all silent about making his opinions known. He had been an early enthusiast of the talkies, and immediately saw that his plays, Marius and Fanny, were naturals for the screen. What better way to sweeten his stories about life in Marseille than by opening them out with visuals of the actual waterfront? But for Pagnol, the words and the sounds came first: It's said that he would turn his back as a scene was being shot, and would only give his approval when what he heard sounded right. That presupposed, of course, a cast capable of making the words work, which meant starting with the original César, the actor known only as Raimu (Jules Auguste Muraire), and the original Panisse, Fernand Charpin, both of them born in the neighborhood of Marseille. The Marius, Pierre Fresnay, and the Fanny, Orane Demazis, had to be coached in the dialect, but most of the rest of the cast were from the south of France. The dialect is lost on us subtitle-dependent Anglophones, but it seems to have been one of the reasons that all of France took the trilogy to heart, relishing this slice of provincial life even in Paris. And it is a glorious trio of movies still, rich with comic performances, dominated of course by Raimu as the blustering, sentimental César. It's hard to find a performer to compare with Raimu, but the one that comes to my mind is Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, certain of himself and capable of explosions that go off with lots of noise and very little actual damage. Raimu, Charpin, and the actors that form their little circle -- best seen when playing cards, as in the classic game in Marius -- are a superb ensemble. There is some controversy over Demazis as Fanny -- the actress is described in one source as "pudding faced," and if you're expecting a gamine type like Leslie Caron, who played the part in the 1961 Fanny directed by Joshua Logan, you'll be disappointed. But I don't mind Demazis at all. While it's hard to think of her as the most beautiful girl in Marseille, she has the ability to pull off the more melodramatic scenes -- admittedly the weakest moments in the trilogy -- with real feeling. Pierre Fresnay is a touch too old in Marius and Fanny, but he comes into his own in César, when the character is closest to his actual age. But what makes it work are the ebullient characters and the splendid comic timing of the performers.

Filmstruck Criterion Channel

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1942)

Henri-Georges Clouzot is best-known today for the chilling Diabolique (1955) and the nail-biter The Wages of Fear (1953), but his first feature was a comedy-mystery somewhat in the manner of The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934). In The Murderer Lives at Number 21, police inspector Wenceslas Vorobechik (Pierre Fresnay), known as Wens, sets out to solve a series of murders in which the killer leaves a calling card: Monsieur Durand. Eventually, he is aided (and occasionally stymied) by his mistress, Mila Milou (Suzy Delair), who gets involved in the case because she thinks the celebrity of bringing the killer to justice would help her nascent career as a singer and actress. Clouzot made the film for a company backed by the occupying German forces, who wanted films to replace American imports. The movie shows no sign of Nazi propaganda, and there are those who claim that Clouzot inserted subtle anti-German jokes into the film. It was based on a novel by Stanislas-André Steenman, who worked on the screenplay with Clouzot, who brought the characters of Wens and Mila over from an earlier short film. Wens and Mila have a relationship somewhat reminiscent of Nick and Nora Charles, although no Thin Man film ever contained a scene like the one in which Mila squeezes out the blackheads on Wens's face -- a gratuitous bit that is presumably designed to show the intimacy of their relationship. Compared to Clouzot's later work, it's a slight but amusing movie, enlivened by the oddball inhabitants of the boarding house at No. 21 Avenue Junot that Wens moves into, disguising himself as a clergyman, after he receives a tip that the murderer lives there.