New Arrival Le Corbeau (#227)

A mysterious writer of poison-pen letters, known only as Le Corbeau (the Raven), plagues a French provincial town, exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the communitys calm surface. Made during the Nazi occupation of France, Henri-Georges ClouzotsLe Corbeauwas attacked by the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press, and the Catholic Church, and was banned after the liberation. But someincluding Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartrerecognized the powerful subtext of Clouzots anti-informant, anti-Gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate his directorial reputation after the war.Le Corbeaubrilliantly captures the paranoid pettiness and self-loathing that turn 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 fromThe Story of French Cinema by Those Who Made It: Grand Illusions 19391942,a 1975 documentary featuring director Henri-Georges Clouzot
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Alan Williams