Le Corbeau [Criterion] (DVD)

Henri-Georges Clouzot

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Amoeba Review

A mysterious writer of poison pen letters known only as Le Corbeau (The Raven) plagues a French provincial town, unwittingly exposing suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community's calm surface. Made during the Nazi Occupation of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau was attacked by the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press, the Catholic Church, and was banned after the Liberation. But some-including Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre-recognized the powerful subtext to Clouzot's anti-informant, anti-Gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate Clouzot's directorial reputation after the war. Le Corbeau brilliantly captures the spirit of paranoid pettiness and self-loathing turning an occupied French town into a twentieth century Salem.

Starring: Pierre Fresnay, Helena Manson, Micheline Francey, Ginette Leclerc
Format: DVD, Widescreen
Language: English
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number of Discs: 1
Rating: Not Rated
Label: Criterion Collection
Release Date: 02/17/2004
Run Time: 91 minutes
Catalogue #: 227

Special Features

Video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de Torchon)
Excerpts From The Story Of French Cinema By Those Who Made It: Grand Illusions 1939-1942, a 1975 Documentary Featuring Henri-Geroges Clouzot
16-page booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Alan Williams, author of Republic Of Images: A History Of French Filmmaking, and two articles from a 1947 French newspaper that reveal the scandal and controversy behind "the Corbeau affair"
Theatrical trailer