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Le Corbeau (The Raven) - Criterion CollectionRating:
Release Date: 17 February, 2004 Retail Price: $29.95 OUR Price: $26.99 You SAVE: $2.96! Cast: |
Le Corbeau (The Raven) - Criterion Collection Reviews
unknown classic, fresh and on-point
I concur with the other reviewers' superlatives about this remarkable film. The acting, the direction, the cinematography is all superb. Criterion has, as usual, given us a beautifully-restored print of the feature film. (Compare to the blurry quality of the original theatrical trailer, just to see how far Criterion refreshed the original). The film, even without knowing the time and place it was made, stands on its own as a look at mutual suspicion, malicious gossip and a prurient interest in personal lives -- something we can relate to, 60 years later.
Criterion has added two featurettes -- a video interview and an excerpt from a a 1975 documentary that included director M. Clouzot -- that puts Le Corbeau in its context, produced in occupied France. The material does bring out that Continental-Film, for whom Clouzot worked, was created by Joseph Goebbels with the aim of making banal, light, frothy entertainments to divert French audiences -- and instead M. Clouzot produced this, a noirish anti-informer film. All the more remarkable that this film seems fresh, and eerily current, today.
M. Clouzot would go on, post-war, to create some classic suspense films: Quai des Orfevres, Diabolique, Wages of Fear. Le Corbeau is an early example of his excellence as a director.
Fascinating and Fun
There was a period of four years during WWII when Nazi-occupied France, through the production company Continental, controlled pretty much the entire film industry in the region. Two men, Greven and Ploquin, had most of the say as to what films would get made. Some commentators have begrudgingly admitted that this fact was ultimately good for French cinema, as the company had very high standards and expectations and released some truly remarkable films. One of the best is certainly Clouzot's "Le Corbeau" ("The Raven"). "Le Corbeau," simply because of the fact that it was paid for by the Nazi party, was banned after France's liberation. The movie was attacked by the Vichy regime and by the Catholic Church as well. Further, the Nazis thought that the film would discourage people in occupied France from writing anonymous letters turning in other people for various "crimes." Because of this Greven fired Clouzot, regardless of the fact that the film uniformly received excellent reviews. As to why the Catholic Church hated the film, one can only speculate. The most obvious and forthcoming answer is that the movie, until the end, seems to make a strong pro-choice statement, making it clear that if a pregnancy endangers the life of a woman, the baby should be aborted (the character who believes this though later changes his opinion).
Apart from the film's notorious past, it must be emphasized that "Le Corbeau" is a brilliant and fascinating movie in its own right. The film concerns a small town in France. The townspeople start receiving poison-pen letters, accusing them and others, especially a certain Dr. Germain, of dirty deeds. This sparks suspicion all around, as everyone's dirty laundry is exposed to everyone else. All of the letters are written in the same handwriting, and all are signed "The Raven" ("Le Corbeau"). In an interesting attempt to identify the culprit, the town's chief psychiatrist gathers all suspects in a classroom and dictates the Raven's letters to them, making them write each in all capitols, just as the Raven did. He believes that as they tire, the idiosyncrasies of their own handwriting will emerge, which he can then compare to the genuine Raven letters.
"Le Corbeau" is an exciting film, filled with great scenes, dialogue, and acting, and as the mystery unfolds the suspense is kept at a maximum. There are plenty of solid twists, as well as some cool conundrums ("Did women A send the letter and lie and woman B's calling, or did woman B really call and put the letter in her own mail slot?") Also, unlike many such mysteries, even the solution is very satisfactory. Additionally, there is good reason to suspect many of the film's characters, which only adds to the fun, and though the red herrings are well done and convincing, of equal importance here is that they are not overdone and that there are not too many plot twists.
As mentioned above, this film is filled with memorable scenes, such as a town mob pursuing a nun and the psychiatrist's monologue about good and evil. In this fabulous scene, the town psychiatrist admonishes Dr. Germain for being naïve enough to believe in "good people" and "bad people." He swings the overhead lamp, throwing shadows about the room as he says that in everyone there is both light and darkness; in the morning he sees both good and evil in the mirror, an angel, standing beside a devil. When Dr. Germain tries to stop the swinging lamp, he burns his hand on the hot bulb. This simple and excellent scene symbolically states that one cannot banish the "grey area" without harming the accuracy of one's own conception of the world. Things really are not "black and white." Also of note is the fact that much of the psychiatrist's dialogue concerning the psyche of a poison-pen culprit was culled from an actual study of poison-pen cases.
In closing, I highly recommend "Le Corbeau." It's a fantastic and exciting film. It's exciting when taken at face value, as a simple mystery, and it's also exciting when one looks at its deeper subtextures-the statements it makes about what was then occurring in occupied France. Though the film was banned after occupied France's liberation, many thinkers saw that the message of this film was good and important. One of the film's defenders was France's most famous thinker, Sartre, who labored attempting to restore Clouzot's reputation. A word of warning: if you are watching the Criterion Collection's version, as with all Criterion Collection special features, do not watch the special features before you watch the film!! It gives the ending away!!
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