Press Release Criterion Press Release: Le Corbeau (1943) (Blu-ray) (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

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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.

FILM INFO​

• France
• 1943
• 91 minutes
• Black & White
• 1.37:1
• French
• Spine #227
  
  

  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
    
    New cover by Jic Clubb
    
    September 20, 2022
    
    

 

[Ronald Epstein]

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[Dick]

This is a really good flick! Nice to see another upgrade from Criterion's DVD library at last.