As previously mentioned, the lit department filings here at Shared Darkness are relatively rare, but one tome that French film fans in particular will likely want to check out is author Judith Mayne’s same-titled exploration of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1943 debut film Le Corbeau, part of the superb French Film Guide series from the University of Illinois Press. Despite being under German rule at the time, the French film industry survived and in fact in many ways thrived, and Mayne examines the domination of the industry by Continental Films, the Nazi-owned arts company for which Clouzot worked. The author asks, crucially, how such a film came to be made at such a time, evoking as it does the intense paranoia of an era in which anonymous letters denouncing friends and neighbors were encouraged by the German occupier. It’s a quite good read, studiously researched and faithfully annotated. To purchase the book via Half.com, click here.