A superb noir thriller.
Le Corbeau (1943)
Runtime: 1 hr 32 mins
Synopsis: This suspense thriller concerns a small French village whose everyday existence is badly shaken by a series of mysterious poison pen letters. The author of the letters, who signs himself "The Raven," has enough defamatory information to provoke tension and suicide.... This suspense thriller concerns a small French village whose everyday existence is badly shaken by a series of mysterious poison pen letters. The author of the letters, who signs himself "The Raven," has enough defamatory information to provoke tension and suicide. [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Pierre Larquey, Noel Roquevert, Ginette Leclerc, Pierre Fresnay
DVD Info
Release:
May 2, 2005
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Keep Case
- Dual Layer
- Full Frame - 1.33
Audio:
- Dolby Digital Mono 1.0 - French
Additional Release Material:
- Interview - 1. Bertrand Tavernier - Director of COUP DE TORCHON
- Documentaries - 1. Excerpts From "The Story of French Cinema By Those Who Made It: Grand Illusions 1939-1942" (1975)
Text/Image Galleries:
- New Essay by Film Scholar Alan Williams
Reviews
This exposé of a malicious small town in France must be one of the most depressed films to emerge from the period of the German Occupation.
It's a subversive work and masterful suspense thriller that's the equal of anything Hitchcock ever put his name to.
A shrewd glimpse into the heart and mind of Vichy France, disclosing a kind of 20-century Salem.
Unfairly dismissed in the 1940s as pro-Nazi propaganda, this electrifying work represents a singularly pessimistic vision of the human condition from one of cinema's most bracingly misanthropic directors.
Polished, impersonal work, it puts forward little more than a spirit of free-floating misanthropy.
It's the kind of seriously offensive in-your-face psychological thriller that would make a hell of a double-feature with Dreyer's Day of Wrath.
Good performances, a fitting atmosphere, and some truly unique characterizations give a lift to an otherwise worn idea.
Clouzot, often called the French Hitchcock, is not just a master of suspense but is also most adroit at implicating his audience.
It’s so deftly made, superbly acted and relentlessly bitter that it manages to condemn repression, hypocrisy and those eager to be judgmental on a universal level.
A sophisticated and morally complex look at the things that damaged people living in a dangerous time will do
An engrossing suspense film that was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot in 1943 during the Nazi Occupation of France.


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