In his fifth season of 'French Sundaes' at the Cinema Museum, Jon Davies tackles the fine tradition of the French thriller in four themed sessions. The theme for February’s event is ‘society’. In the 1943 film Le Corbeau (The Raven) a village doctor becomes target of poison-pen letters. As in many of the greatest thrillers, everyone is a suspect – a whole town in this case. A themed talk from Jon Davies will precede the screening.
Chicago Reader review:
Suffocatingly corrosive and misanthropic, this 1943 thriller was shot in occupied France by Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear), and its story of a small town terrorized by anonymous poison-pen letters so effectively captures the national paranoia that after the war Clouzot was unjustly persecuted as anti-French. The outstanding cast includes Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc. Otto Preminger remade this effectively in 1951 as The Thirteenth Letter, though his Quebec locations lack the earlier film's period interest.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here (and above) is the trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment