Le corbeau

“As sulfurous as [Clouzot’s] best-known films, The Wages of Fear(1953) and Diabolique (1955), or indeed anything this misanthropic filmmaker ever did….takes clinical pleasure in detailing a small town’s moral disintegration.”—J Hoberman, New York Review of Books

A provincial village succumbs to suspicion and general hysteria when an anonymous poison pen writer starts spilling the secrets of its citizens. Shot during the Nazi occupation of France by a German production company and now viewed as a searing critique of French collaborators during the war, the suspenseful tale got director Henri-Georges Clouzot banned from the French film industry for two years following the liberation. (91 mins., 4K DCP)