Le corbeau [The Raven] (1943)

(Criterion Streaming, April 2020) There’s an admirable simplicity at the heart of Le corbeau—in this proto-noir thriller, inhabitants of a small French village start receiving letters that spill the town’s secrets—adultery, abortion, terminal diagnoses, and so on. This leads to an atmosphere of paranoia, distrust and revenge—who is that “raven” who signs the letters? It’s not a bad thriller at all—the paranoia is substantial, the hero has some depth, there are plenty of twists and turns, and the ending hits fast. There’s also a fascinating real-world story to be told about Le Corbeau. Produced by a Franco-German company in a France that was then under Nazi occupation, it wasn’t warmly received by the French, and as soon as the war was over, writer-director Henri-Georges Clouzot was “banned for life” from making movies in France, as the public was convinced the film was an attack on the French. A critical re-evaluation soon followed—Clouzot was eventually unbanned (he ended up delivering two of the best French thrillers of the 1950s) and the film was once again re-evaluated as a subtle attack on the Nazis. While that historical context is interesting, it doesn’t take away from the power of Le corbeau: As a mystery, a thriller and an unforgiving look as small-town power dynamics, it remains a reference.