Rated 4.1 out of 5 Released 81 years ago, this masterpiece will be banned in Liberation

Dr. Germain, who works in a small provincial town, begins to receive anonymous signed letters. the ravenHe was accused of several crimes. However, he is not the only one who receives them.

The entire city is soon threatened and the fragile balance is thrown off. Between hatred and resentment, the poison of doubt takes hold. Everyone, or almost everyone, becomes suspicious. After that, Dr. Germaine decides to investigate…

“the raven It is an extraordinary film. This is indisputable. You’d have to be blind or deaf to deny that fact. However, it was produced under the auspices of Continental during the war and German occupation.

This means: that Mr. Clouseau was paid by the Germans at the same time that these same Germans were killing at Oradur, filling their gas chambers with hundreds of French corpses and killing French hostages.

Thanks to German money, Mr. Clouseau lived a pleasant life, while the actions of the Germans brought misery, shame and terror to France.

These words were written by Joseph Kessel in the famous magazine L’Intransigeant in 1947. Kessel, the great novelist, great resistance fighter and Free French pilot, author of, among other things, Army of Shadows, which will be transmitted. Jean-Pierre Melville on screen.

Kessel’s devastating statement about Clouseau’s second film only sums up the obscurity surrounding this fabled film, produced by the German firm Continental (run by a man named Alfred Greven), even banned in Germany by the Gestapo due to its controversial subject matter. .

A cursed film, it will be accused of serving – whether unwittingly – National Socialist propaganda. It is claimed that the Germans used Le Corbo in neutral or occupied countries, presenting it as “testimony” to the degree of moral degeneration and corruption achieved by France’s democratic and parliamentary regime, which led to the atrocities described in the film.

Accused of defaming the image of the French, Clouseau was sentenced to suspension of his profession by the film cleaning authorities. The banning of the film at the time of its release further increased the tension between the filmmaker’s opponents and defenders. Even if he is rehabilitated, and the film director with him, in 1947.

A case that hit the headlines

Louis Chavannes, Le Corbo’s screenwriter, wrote the first draft of his screenplay between 1935 and 1937, directly inspired by the so-called “Tulle Affair”, which made legal headlines between 1917 and 1922.

It began in December 1917 with anonymous letters sent to the inhabitants of Thule, more specifically to officials belonging to the prefecture. These letters, signed “Eye of the Tiger”, stir up old family faults, illegal trade, reveal marital infidelity, all this is a mixture of slander and revelation.

This campaign of slander and slander creates a heavy climate poisoned by suspicion, and even ends in tragedy when the clerk reports that his wife, who is said to be “the eye of the tiger”, is going insane and dying in an asylum. Then the instruction opens.

In 1922, it resulted in the conviction of a former employee of the prefecture, Angel Laval, who wrote and distributed more than 1,000 letters in four years, with the complicity of his mother and aunt.

His guilt will be proven at the end of an endless collective dictation during which all his defenses will be shattered. The organizer of this test is the expert graphologist Edmond Lockard, doctor and lawyer, director of the Technical Police Laboratory of Lyon, who will carry out the studies published by the medical press on this case.

81 years after its release, The Raven is still striking for its oppressive atmosphere and absolutely relentless exploration of morality. It is also significant that the name of Clouse’s film has been handed down to posterity and has become a common term to identify the author of the anonymous letter(s) of denunciation.

If you have never seen this wonder, the film is worth seeing or re-watching arte.tv. It will be broadcast on December 11 at 13:35.