The Raven (1943) by Henri-Georges Clouzot

AFP – Continental Films/Collection Christophel

CRITIQUE – The crow is a beautiful and noble bird, all dressed in black as if he were going to a funeral. He is seen as a bird of ill omen and the poor beast has nothing to do with it. Doctors, at the time of the plague, wore a helmet extended by a crow's beak to ward off contagion. Being a crow is tantamount to bringing bad luck or creating it through anonymous denunciations. In the 19th century, the priest with his black cassock and the viaticum he carried was associated with the bird with beautiful plumage.

Henri-Georges Clouzot is fascinated by the darkness of the human soul. The Assassin lives at 21 (1942), Quai des Orfèvres (1947) , The Diaboliques (1955), The Spies (1957),  The Truth (1960) or same The Prisoner(1968) tracks the twists and turns and the troubles of human behavior.The Raven  (1943), made in the middle of the Second World War in the Continental studios managed by the German occupiers, therefore in the middle of the Occupation, was a subject for him. It is inspired by an authentic news story which took place in Tulle from 1917 to 1922.

Clouzot's approach is in no way moralistic. It is typical of a filmmaker of great stature. For example, he made a short film,  Le Retour de Jean, in the sketch filmBack to life (1949). This is the story of a former teacher, Jean Girard (Louis Jouvet), who, upon returning from the Nazi penal colony, returns to his modest family pension. His only friend is Bernard, his doctor, also a boarder. That evening, he discovers in his room a German soldier, seriously wounded and wanted by the police. He decides to hide the fugitive whom he thinks is a victim of the war, but Bernard tells him that the man is a Nazi executioner. Jean could have handed him over directly to the police and had him executed without even thinking about it. Exactly not. Jean, for his part, wants to understand how a man can come to such acts or adhere to such an ideology. This is the whole difference between someone who judges without understanding, even if it means one day committing what he denounces, and someone who seeks to elucidate this part of evil to prevent it from happening again, that is to say, to establish it on the level of human knowledge.

Produced by Continental Films, financed by the German occupier, The Raven was released on screens during the Occupation. Although it was not banned at the Liberation, Clouzot was banned from filming for two years. The strange thing is that the filmmaker maintained a certain independence within Continental, which allowed him to make this masterpiece that brought upon him, quite wrongly, accusations of collaboration with the enemy. Now, The Raven aims at everyone.

The film, in black and white, is made with fervor and nervousness, remarkably interpreted, notably by Pierre Fresnay, playing with shadows and light. Henri-Georges Clouzot studies a phenomenon in full swing at the very moment of filming: the denunciation of Jews by anonymous letters. To restrict the film to this aspect alone would be to miss its much broader scope, not only before or during the film, but after. That is to say now. It easily connects to William Wyler's The Rumor(1961) where families withdraw their children from a private school under the false pretext that the two teachers are lesbians. The same mechanism operates almost everywhere in all eras. And of course, nowadays, with the Internet where many people can't help but “snitch” all over the place. It's easy to imagine all those little crows tapping away furiously on their keyboards.

Informing is not about reporting a crime or a burglary to the police. It is primarily about making oneself known, anonymously, but not only that. It is about making public or shedding light on a small fact considered infamous that was lurking in the shadows, whether true or false, to harm a specific person (or several), and that this fact be accredited by public opinion that loves clichés and simplistic imagery. It therefore crosses the private sphere to take shape in the public sphere.

What used to happen on the scale of a village or a city has developed at lightning speed with the Internet and globalization. Informing today acts in veiled terms behind pseudonyms most often. We saw him on Twitter with Balance ton porc, whose animalization translated impotent jealousy, spiteful hatred, little bile in the mouth without recourse to justice. This denunciation is “authorized”, because it reverses the usual denunciation. Liberation of speech, they say as if it did not contain lies. Prodigious sleight of hand especially at a time when everyone can belch out anything without the slightest step back or restraint, the informer imaginarily erasing his act seen in his eyes hypocritically as honorable under the seal of transparency and denunciation. We have even invented a mobile phone application (“Gossip”) to “denounce” in complete peace. This is to say that denunciation has a bright future ahead of it. Have not newspapers or the media become, in this respect, the widely circulated, recognized and subsidized relays of anonymous petty informers? ? No one has the audacity of Clouzot to make a film on such a subject these days, even though he made it in the middle of the Occupation.

We are in the provinces in a rural climate. In Saint-Robin, everything seems peaceful. Until the day when residents and notables receive anonymous letters signed “Le Corbeau”. Their content is slanderous. They often name Doctor Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay) but other people in the town are accused, revealing all their little secrets and their little scams that throw the town into general suspicion. Accused and defamed, Doctor Germain sees patients abandon him. Things go wrong when one of his patients, François (Roger Blin), commits suicide, a letter having revealed to him that he would not survive his illness. Doctor Germain investigates to discover the identity of the mysterious “Corbeau”.

Henri-Georges Clouzot blurs the lines wonderfully. He gradually indicates the ambiguity of all the characters in the sarabande and installs suspicion at all levels like the little girl, Rolande, who listens at the doors: accused of abortive practices, Doctor Germain refuses to reveal his past; Marie Corbin (Héléna Manson), the head nurse, dry and cantankerous, steals the doses of morphine from the hospital by replacing them with distilled water, and accuses her sister, the beautiful Laura Vorzet (Micheline Francey), of wanting to seduce the doctor while secretly reading his correspondence; Laura is a social worker and married to the old psychiatrist Michel Vorzet (Pierre Larquey), who will admit that he is injected with the morphine that Marie, his ex-wife, provides him; Denise Saillens (Ginette Leclerc), sister of the school principal (Noël Roquevert), a beautiful hysterical cripple, lies as she breathes to be the center of attention, and never stops courting the first person who comes along and getting sick to attract the doctor to her.

Everyone lies and hides something, but everyone accuses everyone by announcing that anonymous letters should not be believed.  From the beginning, there is gossip, there is accusation, there is surveillance, there is suspicion. The gossip. The little green bile. What we call society. The poison is launched and spreads like a virus (hence the fact that the action takes place in a hospital). Everyone is a potential crow without knowing it.

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At the funeral of the suicide, all this small, tearful audience tears itself apart, heart on hand first and venom in mouth next, and points the finger at Marie Corbin. She flees and returns home: her apartment is devastated. Stones are thrown at her. The police arrest her. Implacable mechanism of lynching. When we learn that she is not responsible, no one examines their conscience, or comes to apologize. That is what is extraordinary with denunciation: the reason is so quickly put away without a shadow of a doubt. We are then convinced that we did not leave her, when she has just abandoned us without warning.

The anonymous letters stop for a while. The crazy solutions are flying: ” Germain is the Raven's main target. Since we can't get rid of the culprit, let's get rid of Germain “, a notable will say. A woman is sent to trap him. The latter decides to leave the city.

The old psychiatrist Michel Vorzet subjects the inhabitants to a dictation in a school room to authenticate the Raven's handwriting. In the famous and remarkable scene of the face-to-face with Doctor Germain, Michel makes the lamp waltz and makes the most enlightening remarks, their faces passing from shadow to light: “You are amazing. You believe that people are either all good or all bad. You believe that good is light, and dark is evil. But where is the shadow ? Where is the light ? Do you know where the border of evil is ? Do you know if you are on the good or the bad side ? » Doctor Germain will laugh at his nonsense, but will burn himself trying to turn off the lamp.

Light, darkness, who are we really ? The Crow who writes his denunciatory letters is indeed a shady character plunged into a sad passion, but Clouzot broadens his subject by revealing that anyone can fall into his swampy conscience where rancor and desires lapping. “Examine your conscience, you may be surprised by the result. Since a whirlwind of hatred and denunciation has been blowing over the city, all moral values ​​have been more or less corrupted. You are affected like the others. You will fall like them” , Michel rightly adds to the doctor. Lucid words, let us note, spoken by the guilty party himself as we will learn, which gives a singular scope since the filmmaker does not put them precisely in the mouth of an innocent.

Clouzot does not play a script pirouette, but clearly indicates that the Raven is like the others. Because deep down, no one is innocent. Everyone is ready to fall. This is the main and subversive purpose of the film. And not as one might believe in the fact that there would be only one guilty party. It is better to know it deep down in one's conscience and to prevent oneself from doing so at the crucial moment rather than to believe oneself virtuously pure and to pass the wall of ignominy without even realizing it.

Precisely, if people practice the dishonorable sport of denunciation, it is because the temptation is seductive, within reach of the hand or keyboard, to take revenge, hoping that the thing will not be seen, their obscure conscience remaking the plaster over time.  Basically, and this is the very subject of the film, what drives people, often hidden behind their anonymity, to attack their peers ? To feverishly let their little inner crow speak ? ” Hell was born of an indiscretion “, wrote Céline. That is to say, three times nothing. Nothing but the most banal. Impotent jealousy. A fierce hatred towards one's neighbor. As in The Raven of which we learn at the end that the co-responsible is Laura Vorzet relayed by her husband, Michel, the psychiatrist, who as he got older married her to find a little youth. Tired of her old husband, the beautiful blonde desired Doctor Rémy Germain who did not meet her expectations before launching into the very first letter. That's all. Who can exempt themselves from such banality ? It is again the psychiatrist who will say to Doctor Germain much too sure of himself: ” You will search my briefcase if I forget it on this desk. And you will sleep with Rolande if she is in love with you. “ Here, it is the Raven who is lucid because he is only our own reflection. It is no coincidence that the filmmaker will try to make a film about jealousy, Hell, which will remain unfinished.

Moreover, when the culprit is designated, whether real or imaginary, such as Marie Corbin, it is not far from being lynched in turn if the opportunity allows. The implacable trap has closed. In The Raven, denunciation operates through mimicry, contaminating all the protagonists like a virus. Each one then loses his singularity, his individuality to associate himself with the hateful crowd, double among doubles. As everyone has something to reproach themselves for, reporting it on someone hated is practical to wash away one's bad conscience in the great dirty waters of denunciation. And the Raven then flies away silently with a beat of its wings and thus passes from one person to another, as each one can become a rhinoceros like in Eugène Ionesco's play with the eponymous title, each one hoping to wash away all his turpitudes in the dirty waters of denunciation or denunciation, in his own eyes certainly, but in the eyes of others.

The film skillfully plays with our own suspicion. We doubt, we think we know who did it, then Clouzot points us elsewhere, leads us by the tip of the beak, makes the spectator dizzy, falsely reassured in his armchair that he is not responsible for it. While he is immersed up to his neck in everyday life, ready to fall into ignominy at the drop of a hat. The border is as thin as a sheet of cigarette paper, ready to burn at the slightest spark. This is the great idea of ​​the film. If there is indeed a culprit at the end, everyone was a Raven.

Precisely, Clouzot, a man of images, ends his film with a stroke of genius in a specifically cinematic shot. Doctor Germain discovers that the culprit is the old psychiatrist, whose throat was cut on his desk, having been unable to finish a letter of denunciation, a way of saying that this very lucid man (and psychiatrist) has also succumbed. The doctor then opens the window and first sees “innocent” children. playing marbles and then metaphorically, as if she had flown out of the open window to hover over the city, the silhouette of the mother of young François who flees into the street in mourning clothes like a Raven, carrying with her the irreparable darkness of evil by having become a murderer.

A tense, feverish film, with concise and striking dialogues, supported by a narrative framework constantly on alert, The Raven leaves no escape. It is better to never have anything to do with the informer, and to stay on the other side of the fence, even if it means leaving alone like Audrey Hepburn at the end of The Rumor rather than to end up with a blackened soul like the bird with beautiful plumage.

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