Very disappointing...

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Absolutely the worst movie.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

In the village of Saint Robin, the population receives poison pen letters signed as The Raven spreading rumors and accusations. Dr. Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), who is having an affair with the social assistant Laura (Micheline Francey), the wife of the psychiatrist Dr. Michel Vorzet (Pierre Larquey) that works with him at the local hospital, is the main victim of The Raven. His affair is disclosed and he is also accused of abortionist. When a patient of the hospital commits suicide after receiving a letter telling that his cancer is terminal, the loathed nurse Marie Corbin (Héléna Manson) is arrested since people believe she is The Raven. But soon there are other letters and Dr. Vorzet tries to identify who might be the notorious Raven. "Le Corbeau" is an intriguing film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, with the storyline about a mysterious character entitled The Raven that writes poison pen letters and the power of rumors and the effect in the population of a small town in France. The film was banned in France since it was produced by the German company Continental Films during World War II in the occupied France. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "O Corvo" ("The Raven")

There is a pest in a small French town who is writing letters to people and insulting them as well as spreading some unwanted scandal on their behalf. It's quite a good way of getting to people. New doctor in town Pierre Fresnay (le docteur Remy) seems to be the main target and the audience begin to question his past as he doesn't seem to have a good record when it comes to performing abortions. We are taken through a cast of characters who are related to each other or having affairs and can you guess the culprit? I found some of the relationships confusing so pay attention or you may get relatives and girlfriends mixed up as I did. The cast are good and we get a varied selection of characters. You'll definitely change your mind as to who is the guilty party even if you do eventually guess correctly. There is also a twist at the end, which you may also guess as the clues are there for you. It doesn't matter though as I found things resolved in a refreshingly satisfying way. Hollywood at the time wouldn't have let this ending pass so the film scores points for that.The film delivers some tense scenes, eg, the funeral and fate of nurse Helena Manson (Marie) – it's quite an overbearing sequence – and some humorous moments, eg, the dictation that takes forever. It's the exam from hell that never finishes. You just keep going. Ha ha. The dialogue is good and my favourite of the cast is the village tart Ginette Leclerc (Denise). It's an absorbing film and I know people blab on about some sort of significance in relation to freedom and the Nazi party, but it is basically an entertaining story and can be watched as precisely that without reading in anything else to the proceedings.

In French, the 'crow' is a bird reference defining an anonymous letter sender, generally, poison pen letters, meant to denounce someone or to threaten him. Henri-George Clouzot's "The Crow" is based on a true story that occurred in Tulle, in 1917, a small town in the middle of France. Albeit the origin is true, "The Crow" takes place in a small town "like any other", anywhere in France, it couldn't occult the fact that the practice became very popular during the German occupation, when many French people, claiming to be 'good citizens' or only making their duty, denounced Jews, resistant or relatives to the local Police. "The Crow" was released in 1942, during the occupation, like another French masterpiece "Children of Paradise", but while the context hardly impacted the content of Carné's film, it would be difficult to overlook it for Clouzot, a controversial practice for a controversial time.The film opens with Docteur Remi Germain (Pierre Fresnay) a no-nonsense hardly smiling man, an unusual choice for a lead but another proof that Clouzot is beyond archetypes. Germain doesn't like children but lives in a school director's house, which is not his first paradox, he's very professional with his patients yet indulge himself to some displays of friendship with the beautiful Laura Vorzet (Micheline Francey), the wife of the elderly psychiatrist doctor, played by Pierre Larquay. Laura's sister, an unpleasant and unattractive nurse suspects something going between them and shows it through her constant hostility toward Germain. To complete the picture, the school director's daughter Denise (Ginette Leclerc) and town's slut, is in love with German but can't stand the way he ignores her. In ten minutes, we are familiar with most of the protagonists and the range of suspicions is very wide as soon as the first of the several anonymous letters turn the peaceful town's life into a terrifying witch hunt. The letter accuses Germain of practicing abortions and having illegitimate relations with the doctor's wife. Anyone could have written it as suggests one of the film's most delightful scene. The sympathetic Larquay, remarkably contrasting with Fresnay's coldness, enumerates all the possibilities: it could be anyone. Then, before he leaves, Fresnay asks him the question that tickles our mind: "for all we know, it could be you", to which the doctor responds "possible", as a mystery the film has a sort of Agatha Christie feeling. When everybody is suspect, there are chances not everyone would be truly 'innocent'.And then we touch the controversial core of the film. Clouzot has often been blamed for portraying unsympathetic characters, I won't be the devil's advocate, but I guess I understand why this criticism is often expressed. Clouzot has an extraordinary talent to explore the darkest sides of the human soul: jealousy, envy, greed, lust and much more hypocrisy. Remember Jo in" Wages of Fear" playing tough during the first act before revealing his cowardice, in "The Crow", people are not unsympathetic, but the letters that denounced them awaken defensive and egoistical reactions. "The Crow" is built like a mystery but resonates like a profound and subversive commentary of the methods and practices that prevailed and that inspired the worst from good citizens.Yet the ambiguity remains because while everybody is suspect, everybody is also victim of these accusations when letters start being sent to all the population, when everyone is both an accuser and accused. The cheaters, the cuckold, the sluts, the upstarts, they're all denounced, and sometimes the subject is treated with less gravity and more comedy, like when the Postmaster takes a letter for his wife, a gesture that doesn't fool his employees. The Crow opened a Pandora box that can be paralleled with the presence of Germans in France, with the growing paranoia and suspicion effect applying to everyone. "The Crow" even shares a similarity with the Nazi's black eagle, a bad omen for the population. But even this conclusion is debatable, the Occupation is never mentioned, the story could take place in the mid 30's as well, but it was considered Anti-French, in the way it was vilifying the population, but Anti-French in the 40's can be a good reason to see it with more positive eyes a few years later. Except Clouzot produced it with a German-owned company, and the film features an unforgettable scene set in a classroom, when Dr Larquay swings a lamp that lights a globe, putting light and shadow in different parts of the room, in order to expose the ambivalence of the world, what is exactly right, or what is wrong is a matter of perception. This kind of cynical speech can also serve as an alibi for the detractors until the very ending of the film gives another resonance to the scene. As usual with Clouzot, the most memorable moments of his films happen to be the most controversial. And the controversy surrounding "The Crow" is understandable as long as it doesn't overlook the remarkable direction of the film that transcends the intelligence and subversiveness of its screenplay, foreshadowing more great movies to come. Henri-George Clouzot also demonstrates his unique talent with moves about everyday people trapped in extraordinary situations: doctor, magistrate, cops, housewives, teachers, janitors. Pierre Fresnay, the Captain from "Grand Illusion" is again perfect as the doctor Remi Germain but the scene-stealer remains Larquay with his inimitable voice and intelligent analysis and Ginette Leclerc as a good-hearted and femme fatale-like Danielle. I use the word because the film has often been labeled as the first film noir of French cinema along with "Quai des Brumes", maybe it is true in the way it echoes the 'darkest' and most inclined to pessimism period of French history, it makes "The Crow" even more historically and culturally significant anyway.

This was the first of Clouzot's great masterpieces for the screen. It is simply amazing that he managed to pull it off under the noses of the German occupiers, indeed through one of their own production units. The film is a massive frontal attack on the craven Vichy mentality, of turning in one's neighbours, and of the 'informant society' which grows up under any occupying force in any country, but which thrived especially well in the hothouse atmosphere of the typical small French town. Of course, today, we are told that everybody was in the Resistance, but if you add them all up, the Resistance would have been greater than the population of France! In fact, the Resistance was tiny. President Mitterand claimed to have been in the Resistance, but he was later proved to have been a cringeing Vichy boot-licker. If the lies extend as high as the President of France, you can imagine how far and wide they spread lower down. In this film, a series of anonymous poison pen letters, written by an extremely well-informed but clearly deranged person, begin to flood the town. Eventually, hundreds of them are received. No one knows who is doing this, but vicious infighting takes place as a result of their 'information', reprisals and revenge are taken without reflection or hesitation, pretty much par for the course in wartime France. Everybody is inclined to believe everything fed to their feverish and vicious imaginations by the unknown letter writer, who calls himself or herself 'Le Corbeau' ('The Raven'). The whole society is set against itself and starts tearing itself apart on the basis of flimsy and unsubtantiated allegations from an unknown person. Clouzot shows the merciless progression of this herd insanity, even as he lived in the midst of it in his occupied country. When the Nazis realized what a cuckoo had been in their next, they refused to release the film. After the Liberation, the film was still prohibited and Clouzot blacklisted. The fact is that Clouzot had lifted the rock under which all the creepy-crawlies were living and had exposed them to view, and no one could take it, either of left or of right. The fact that he had done it in an entirely nonpolitical way made it even worse, since his target was not any doctrine or dogma but the weaknesses of human nature itself. He not only touched a raw nerve, he twisted it in his fist and made everyone scream with the agony of exposure. This is one of the most despairingly cynical films ever made, a brilliant, horrifying vision of human folly and madness. Clouzot really should have made a film about the Tulip Mania! One must keep in mind that France was the country where the most attention had been called to crowd behaviour and mass insanity, in Gustave Le Bon's famous book 'Psychologie des Foules' (1895, translated into English in 1896 as 'The Crowd', a book prominently reissued in France in 1947 when it was safe to do so). Clouzot and all French intellectuals were well aware of the issues of crowd madness raised by Le Bon half a century earlier, which had made a deep impact of French intellectual life. If Le Bon had been a filmmaker, he might have made 'Le Corbeau' to prove his points. Interwoven with the black and disturbing theme are various stories of corruption going on within the town, including the taking of opium, adulterous liaisons and betrayals, and a seething ferment of vicious living. One poor boy is driven to suicide in his hospital bed by one of the poison pen letters. This film is spell-binding in its portrayal of the underside of human psychology, and of how easily the dark forces erupt.