In the small French village of St. Robin a reserved country doctor receives a poison-pen accusing him of practicing abortions to relieve mothers of unwilling burdens. Soon everyone else starts receiving similar letters, accusing each and everyone of dark secrets. Paranoia and mass hysteria set in as people begin spying each other looking for the culprit. Innocents are slandered and persecuted without evidence. Violence ensues, one man commits suicide. And yet the poison-pen letters, always signed by The Raven, continue to arrive.
This is a slow, carefully-built suspense movie in which the identity of The Raven isn't important (and for my part the revelation was ultimately disappointing); Henri-Georges Clouzot is more interested in the human drama, in the relationships between the characters, in the way intrigue, rumors, hidden hatreds infect and destroy a community. It's a misanthropic movie, showing how easily people can become irrational and violent and suggesting there's no cure for this, that it is embedded in our nature. Clouzot, working during the Nazi occupation of France, had many reasons to be depressed about Mankind.
As the study of a community it is interesting. As a thriller I found it dull. Many of the qualities that made me enjoy his other thriller Les Diaboliques is also here, but something didn't click for me. The ending, the moralist punishment of The Raven, seemed so rushed and contrary to the rest of this bleak movie, that I wonder if Clouzot was forced to put it there. I had the same feeling about Les Diaboliques.
Slow and sometimes dull, it's an interesting thriller, but not one I'd like to watch again any time soon.
This is a slow, carefully-built suspense movie in which the identity of The Raven isn't important (and for my part the revelation was ultimately disappointing); Henri-Georges Clouzot is more interested in the human drama, in the relationships between the characters, in the way intrigue, rumors, hidden hatreds infect and destroy a community. It's a misanthropic movie, showing how easily people can become irrational and violent and suggesting there's no cure for this, that it is embedded in our nature. Clouzot, working during the Nazi occupation of France, had many reasons to be depressed about Mankind.
As the study of a community it is interesting. As a thriller I found it dull. Many of the qualities that made me enjoy his other thriller Les Diaboliques is also here, but something didn't click for me. The ending, the moralist punishment of The Raven, seemed so rushed and contrary to the rest of this bleak movie, that I wonder if Clouzot was forced to put it there. I had the same feeling about Les Diaboliques.
Slow and sometimes dull, it's an interesting thriller, but not one I'd like to watch again any time soon.