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heard about it and had to see it. well worth the effort tracking it down and if you are looking for something slightly different and dark. then this is it.
This, of course, was the film that earned Clouzot a lasting reputation as a collaborator - made for the infamous German Continental films, it was attacked by both the Nazis for discouraging the French from informing (their main source of information during the occupation) and the resistance for attacking the French moral character. Of the two, it's pretty obvious the Nazis were on the right track. Even though the Germans are conspicuous by their absence, it makes clear that the anonymous informer/s are undermining solidarity and making the town easy prey for predators (it is implicit in the film that the Raven is not the only poison-pen writer in the town as a veritable flock of Ravens emerge).
The suspense comes not from the Raven's identity, which is blindingly obvious in this era of double-endings but must have seemed groundbreaking at the time, but from what damage the Raven will do next. Blessed with a surprisingly unlikable hero and a frankness lacking in US and British films of the period - abortion and drug-addiction are discussed as readily as adultery and embezzlement - there is a somewhat awkward Catholic moral imposed at the end (the good doctor learns it is better to let a mother die in childbirth to save the child than vice versa because the future is more important than the past) but it's still refreshingly dark. The script establishes character, setting and guilty secrets with remarkable economy and the film is blessed with a great use of location and some visually impressive set pieces: the funeral where people step around a letter left by the Raven before a child picks it up or the huge church silenced by a single letter fluttering down from the gallery are particularly striking. It also has a biting black wit and an interesting discussion about the interdependent nature of good and evil.
A genuine masterpiece, and entertaining with it, this UK DVD offers little in the way of extras (the R1 Criterion DVD boasts an interesting 18-minute interview with Bertran Tavernier on Continental and Clouzot and an interesting extract from a French documentary with Clouzot and others talking about the film and French cinema during the Nazi occupation), but the film is so good is still well worth investing in a copy.
tense noir thriller, a deeply dark humored, sometimes blackly comic
look at human nature, and a political tale of moral hypocrisy in a
small town.
By the end I was riveted, moved and provoked.
I was even more impressed when I learned more about the history of the
film. Made while France was under occupation by the Nazis, the theme of
neighbor turning against neighbor takes on an even deeper and more
chilling context.
A film with no hero and many villains, it is challenging, well acted
and physically beautiful.
How sadly ironic that film-maker Clouzot was castigated after the war
for being a Nazi collaborator for making the film under the thumb of
the Nazis (who, of course, controlled the French film industry at the
time), when this is about as clearly an anti-collaborationist film as
one could imagine.
This is truly subversive cinema at its finest.
tense noir thriller, a deeply dark humored, sometimes blackly comic
look at human nature, and a... Read more
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