Director
Henri-Georges Clouzot (Wages of Fear,
Diabolique) was a master of the
double-plotted thriller, a filmmaker who was able to get into the hearts and
minds of his characters even when they were dark and not particularly
comfortable places. Criterion honors the director and his humble if still
astute beginnings with their sterling new release of his 1943 debut film, Le Corbeau. The movie is a veritable
masterwork of communal paranoia, self-loathing and general discontent, the
framework from which Stephen King worked for Needful Things and a hundred other writers and artists for their
own tales of citizens who turns on each other for no other reason than that
they can and it is in their nature. 
The film centers on
the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town as they grapple with and try
to out the mysterious writer — known only as “le corbeau,” or the raven — of a
series of poison pen letters. Deftly playing one person off another with
exposed secrets, gossip and half-truths, the letters and their perpetrator
reveal the suspicion and rancor seething just beneath the community’s calm
surface, leading to deadly consequences for more than one townsperson. While
not quite on a par with Wages of Fear
and Diabolique — each of which showcase
a more accomplished, technically polished sense of overall filmmaking — Le Corbeau shouldn’t be discounted for
both its narrative precision and its historical significance. The film was made
and released in Nazi-occupied
speculation because of that. (Some read it as parable, others as complicit propaganda;
regardless, it was widely assailed at the time of its original release and
banned after the liberation.) Viewed decades later, its subtext is still open
to multiple interpretations, though Clouzot obviously doesn’t identify with the
titular informant. The portrait that ultimately emerges is one of a birds-eye
view of a 20th century Salem, where no secret is safe and no pettiness too
small to dramatically undue someone’s fate.
The DVD is anchored
by a superb new digital transfer with restored image and sound. It also
benefits from a new and improved English subtitle translation (above). Its extras
include a video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier; pertinent excerpts
with Clouzot from a great 1975 documentary, The
Story of French Cinema By Those Who Made It; the movie’s theatrical
trailer; and a 16-page booklet that features lithographs of two articles from a
1947 French newspaper as well as a new essay by author and French film scholar
Alan Williams. While there could have been debate ad nauseum on the
post-release controversy of the film and its detractors and champions, these
incisive written inclusions distill Le
Corbeau nicely, making it a palatable pick-up for foreign cinema
aficionados and French film neophytes alike. For more about author Judith Mayne’s same-titled book on the film, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)