Le Corbeau/The Raven (NTSC, All Region, Import)

Clouzot made this 1942 film using Nazi money, but it's a slyly anti-Nazi film. One scene, in which two major characters discuss morality, features a swinging lamp that puts their faces into light and dark phases, something that may have inspired Hitchcock's climactic scene in Psycho. Anyone who likes HItchcock or film noir will enjoy this strange little film with a message about the means by which tyrants turn people against one another.

Beautifully restored. Captivating story with numerous and surprising turn of events, filmed during the German occupation of France, explaining the tragic era of fear and denunciations. Magnificent actors, topped by the the enigmatic detective, superbly depicted by French legend Louis Jouvet. A gem.

The KOREAN DVD for this French classic presents a very good print, sharp and with excellent contrast. The soundtrach is in the original French, and the default subtitles are in Korean, but you can choose English subtitles quite easily. Until Criterion releases this, you can't go wrong with this one. A MUST for serious film collectors.

I purchased this blu Ray dvd and could not get it to play in any of my blu Ray players. All my players are ALL REGION, so they play DVD’S from all formats around the world. I think I was mailed a dud.

Some called the director Henri Georges Clouzot "the French Hitchcock." But in many ways Hitchcock was Santa Claus next to the cynical Clouzot. The Frenchman was a master of film noir, that bleakest and blackest of film genres. He made three undeniably great films: "Diabolique", "The Wages of Fear", and this one. For some reason it's been packaged here as "The Raven", but its better known title is "Le Corbeau", or "The Crow." Like Clouzot's other great movies, it's a suspenseful, terrifying journey into the heart of darkness that can exist in the human soul. In a small French village, someone is sending anonymous, hate-filled letters full of lies and half-truths about the villagers: she is a thief, he is an adulterer, that doctor performs secret abortions. The letters are signed "the Crow." The level of hate and paranoia in the small village rises to fever pitch as a witch-hunt develops to find The Crow. The final identity of the letter-writer is shocking, but logical and inevitable. You have to watch the film twice in order to pick up all the diabolical little clues Clouzot lets drop. The protagonist, Dr. Germain (the main target of the Crow's letter-writing campaign) loses his rigidity about human nature and begins to see that people are a mixture of good and evil and that "evil is necessary. It's like a disease from which you emerge stronger." The film is cleverly written and beautifully and ominously photographed in the best noir style. The film was made in German-occupied France in 1943 and was a harsh portrait of a small French town, so after the war it was misconstrued by many as anti-French propaganda, and Clouzot had trouble finding work for a few years. That could be the reason why this movie is not as widely appreciated as his others. But it's not a political film that deals with passing issues. It's a film-noir gem.

A 1943 film, therefore set in Occupied France, this atmospheric thriller dealing with poison pen letters being sent out into a small community was banned at the time and the director,. Henri-Georges Clouzot accused of peddling collaborationist propaganda. Now we can see it as an expose of the hypocrisy that existed under the German Occupation. Apart from that It is a gripping a extremely well-acted film.Often "old" films can be reviewed many years later in a different light and this DVD has an introduction by the esteemed French film critic Ginette Vincendeau.

'Le Corbeau' is one of Henri-Georges Clouzot's very best films and a true classic of French cinema. It's a suspenseful WWII whodunnit with some subtle Hitchcockian touches. I would rate it right up there with 'Quai des Orfèvres', 'Les Diaboliques' and 'Le Salaire de la Peur'. 'Le Corbeau' is another fine addition to my ever-expanding collection of classic French films. Recommended.

An odd but tremendously potent mix of a 'quiet' non-violent but verytense noir thriller, a deeply dark humored, sometimes blackly comiclook at human nature, and a political tale of moral hypocrisy in asmall town.By the end I was riveted, moved and provoked.I was even more impressed when I learned more about the history of thefilm. Made while France was under occupation by the Nazis, the theme ofneighbor turning against neighbor takes on an even deeper and morechilling context.A film with no hero and many villains, it is challenging, well actedand physically beautiful.How sadly ironic that film-maker Clouzot was castigated after the warfor being a Nazi collaborator for making the film under the thumb ofthe Nazis (who, of course, controlled the French film industry at thetime), when this is about as clearly an anti-collaborationist film asone could imagine.This is truly subversive cinema at its finest.

Filmed during the Nazi Occupation this is a tense thriller set in a small provincial town plagued by a series of poison pen letters that set the townsfolk at each others throats. Well plotted and builds nicely to a satisfying climax. Ginette Leclerc is well cast as the local sexpot tempting the town doctor played by Pierre Fresnay.

Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but emerging from a recent seminar on French films noirs, I loved it. Stylish and restrained with Hitchcockian touches and a sense of paranoia redolent of its time.