criterionforum.org

Le Corbeau



A mysterious writer of poison-pen letters, known only as Le Corbeau (the Raven), plagues a provincial French town, exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community's calm surface. Made during the Nazi occupation of France, this film by Henri-Georges Clouzot was attacked by the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press, and the Catholic Church, and was banned after the country's 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 his directorial reputation after the war. Le Corbeau brilliantly captures the spirit of paranoid pettiness and self-loathing that turns an occupied French town into a twentieth-century Salem.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Interview with filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier
• Excerpts from The Story of French Cinema by Those Who Made It: Grand Illusions 1939–1942, a 1975 documentary featuring director Henri-Georges Clouzot
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Alan Williams

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

Feature currently disabled

I cannot believe this film/dvd only has two posts including the original..

huh? This is one of the best suspense movies I have seen and Clouzot is an amazing director. What gives?

Anyway, I noticed that this DVD has fallen out of print. Anyone know why? Are they re-releasing it? or did they lose the rights?

It's a fantastic film that was unjustly maligned in the post war climate.

The CC transfer was problematic, to say the least-- the Optimum looked absolutely filmmic vs the very analoguey & chroma-plugged CC.. for which there was very little excuse, particularly given the gorgeous transfers CC was long known for at time of release. A really bad transfer-- an anomaly in the catalog for sure. I'm a fervent admirer of Clouzot, and own this along with the other CC Clouzots except Diabolique. Quai de Orfevre's is a rampantly decadent, sublime masterpiece, and much underdiscussed as well. For some reason Clouzot remains low on the forum's (and "arthouse"s) radar.

aox wrote:Anyway, I noticed that this DVD has fallen out of print. Anyone know why? Are they re-releasing it? or did they lose the rights?

As discussed in this thread, Le Corbeau was one of 4 titles owned by Studio Canal that all went OOP at the same time. Looks like Criterion's rights ran out on them.

That really sucks. Thanks for the link, though. I was going to rush out and try to snatch a copy (as I did with Carne's fantastic "Port of Shadows" last month), but I am hesitant now.

It's too bad too, because I think the artwork is fantastic and the cover is in my top 5 favorite Criterion covers. I just feel it matches the film so well.

I recall that there was more discussion of this particular film in the previous incarnation of this forum. Many of CC's earlier releases appear not to have received much attention from the members here because those older posts/discussions got lost.

The film is wonderful, as are most of Clouzot's, and it's in my to-re-watch pile -- which is growing larger as I've gradually whittled down my kevyip.

aox wrote:It's too bad too, because I think the artwork is fantastic and the cover is in my top 5 favorite Criterion covers. I just feel it matches the film so well.

the artwork is amazing, definitely within my top 5 too ...however, I haven't finished the film (!!)

forgive me, because the handful of people here seem to really like it, but I just couldn't get past the first 25 minutes. Is that reminiscent of your experiences at all? Did it...pick up..later on? Should I try again, or according to my stated feelings, should I just let it be?

LQ wrote: forgive me, because the handful of people here seem to really like it, but I just couldn't get past the first 25 minutes. Is that reminiscent of your experiences at all? Did it...pick up..later on? Should I try again, or according to my stated feelings, should I just let it be?

Please please please give it a chance! Each Clouzot could be your last!

I love Clouzot's films dearly, they are such visceral, cynical yarns, not a wasted minute among the bunch. I'm not sure what part you stopped at, but believe me, this shit is engrossing. I can't say I was ever bored by it, but the excitement of watching a new Clouzot (I had seen all of his films available in region 1 at that point) was enough to keep my eyes glued. It may be the best photographed film of his; it captures the atmosphere of a small hamlet so precisely that the tale unfolding within it feels all the more shocking.

This is also, IMO, Clouzot's most political film, in terms of sexual and judicial matters. If that sort of thing interests you, this is a must.

Even though this is his earliest film in the collection, try watching some of his other films. "Diabolique" was where I started, and you can plainly see what it did to me.

HypnoHelioStaticStasis wrote:it captures the atmosphere of a small hamlet so precisely that the tale unfolding within it feels all the more shocking.

Along those lines:
I also don't know LQ stopped, but .....
It seems to me that the early part of the film is *purposely* somewhat banal, in order to set that up.

LQ wrote:I just couldn't get past the first 25 minutes.

I thought Le Corbeau had some interesting shots and some interesting political undertones, but it nearly put me to sleep. There are parts of the movie that are just flat out boring, with very few interesting parts in between. On the other hand, I thought Diabolique was great.

I'm glad I watched both, though.

PillowRock wrote:It seems to me that the early part of the film is *purposely* somewhat banal, in order to set that up.

aha. I could get behind that idea. I'll watch it again, promise! I have seen Diabolique and LOVED it, but thats it so far.

I've watched the film twice, and is it my imagination or was the sound mastering somewhat messed up? Everything sounds compressed.

Wood Tick wrote:I've watched the film twice, and is it my imagination or was the sound mastering somewhat messed up? Everything sounds compressed.

Yeah, I noticed this too. It sounds like the audio is 128kbps or something.

HerrSchreck wrote:It's a fantastic film that was unjustly maligned in the post war climate.

The CC transfer was problematic, to say the least-- the Optimum looked absolutely filmmic vs the very analoguey & chroma-plugged CC.. for which there was very little excuse, particularly given the gorgeous transfers CC was long known for at time of release. A really bad transfer-- an anomaly in the catalog for sure. I'm a fervent admirer of Clouzot, and own this along with the other CC Clouzots except Diabolique. Quai de Orfevre's is a rampantly decadent, sublime masterpiece, and much underdiscussed as well. For some reason Clouzot remains low on the forum's (and "arthouse"s) radar.

So this is back in print, but I am assuming these problems have not been fixed?

Does anyone have the definitive word on whether or not Le Corbeau is going to be re-released? It's still listed as "out of print" on The Criterion Collection website.

It's out (along with Quai des Orfevres). Amazon and DVD Empire have them. Criterion hasn't updated their site yet.

Is it just me, or does this look like it was mastered from a really good VHS or a laserdisc or something? There's something about the motion, and the detail, or lack thereof, that looks really video-y. See the second screenshot in the dvdbeaver review in particular. There's not a lot of digital artifacting or anything, it just looks like the source was video.

Jun-Dai wrote:Is it just me, or does this look like it was mastered from a really good VHS or a laserdisc or something?

Some complaints about the transfer have been voiced in this thread already, so you're not alone. The cover blurp simply calls this "new digital transfer", not HD or something, so I suppose that it comes from an earlier digital source, such as might have been used for a laserdisc (I don't know whether there ever was a CC laserdisc of this). The second Beaver cap shows enormous contrast boosting, thus its artificial look. But all in all, I wasn't particularly unhappy about the disc, there are worse examples in the collection, though mostly much older discs than this.

As Chris stated, Amazon has it for sale, but now the CC site has this, variety lights, quai des... up for sale and back in print officially.

I thought this film was great. Clouzot films for me are sneakily suspenseful, in that it takes awhile before I realize I've been gripped by what he's been doing all along. Le Corbeau had some wonderful camerawork, and Clouzot is especially good playing with shadows. For some reason, I'm always reluctant to watch his films--perhaps I'm expecting a suspense movie that's become dated--and every time I wonder why I was so reluctant. His suspense films aren't dated at all, and indeed put many of today's suspense thrillers to shame.

I was anxious to see this having read about it in Ivan Butler's book on Horror in the Cinema nearly 40 years ago now, and wasn't able to until the CC disc came out. I was not disappointed---a very effective picture with a quite modern sense of paranoia. I know the source materials were problematic on this due to Clouzot's problems with the French govt., but it'd be nice to get an upgrade of it. Is the rerelease a new transfer?

Mark Zimmer wrote: Is the rerelease a new transfer?

nope

So it's the film itself that is problematic, not the transfer? I'm thinking mostly of the sound. I don't remember the picture being bad, but the sound yes. I thought it was bad compression because it sounded like it. It didn't helped that the actors were all speaking in that neutral, news announcer style either (Despite this, an excellent film, just like all the Clouzot in the CC)

I've seen footage of alleged collaborators being paraded through the streets after the liberation. Women who had fraternized with German soldiers had their heads shorn, and their blouses torn open and swastikas painted on their breasts. The mobbing of Marie Corbin in the film was prescient in that regard.

~

At the time Clouzot made this film, the poisoned-pen campaign would have been an obvious metaphor to the audience. The mere subject matter would have spoken for itself. But if the film were viewed with no knowledge of its historical context, would the political subtext be discernable?

(added: not that anyone's likely to watch the movie unaware of its origin. I guess what I'm really trying to ask is whether the film is allegorical down to its particulars. Can one find disguised topical allusions, hidden symbols. In retropsect, I can imagine, for example, that the ambulance would have borne a chilling resemblance to a Gestapo van).