Le Corbeau (1943)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Le Corbeau (1943) -- H. G. Clouzot

Extremely bitter tale (though laced with black humor) of a poison-pen writer who sows enmity among the residents of a provincial French town, beginning with a new doctor who is accused of being an abortionist.  Henri-Georges Clouzot treats the search for the culprit like a detective story and we are never certain who is telling the truth and who is not -- even the protagonist, with whom we might feel some identification, seems to be hiding something and is portrayed as a cold and rather unfeeling character.  Indeed, I did not ferret out the actual criminal (although one of many plausible possibilities) and had to be told at the end (a very apt ending). Clouzot made this for a German company during the French occupation and was subsequently banned from working for two years after the war ended (he went on to make the equally bleak Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques).  Nevertheless, the film can be read as a bitter take on the paranoia and suspicion fostered by the occupation, during which neighbors spied on neighbors and informed on each other to the gestapo.  One character here even declares "I'm not an informer!".  Hard to know whether this was understood (and accepted as reality) by the German censors or whether it slipped by.  The French later decided that it didn't make them look too good -- but indeed Clouzot is indicting all of humanity here.  Wonderfully shot in high contrast B & W and highly recommended.