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The bravura opening photographs a bucolic vista, tilts to a graveyard framed by stone arches, and tracks to an iron gate that grinds open: France, "ici ou ailleurs." The doctor (Pierre Fresnay) emerges from a miscarriage with bloodied hands, his indiscretions include the married social worker (Micheline Francey) and the club-footed minx (Ginette Leclerc), along with a few "phantoms" from the past. Whispers of adultery and drug-smuggling pockmark the village, the bespectacled schoolgirl (Liliane Maigné) is a budding kleptomaniac and a nunnish spinster (Héléna Manson) is in charge of the sick. ("She's a mean woman." "She's just unhappy.") The communal bucket only needs one drop to overflow, ink does it—mysterious letters spread calumnies and accusations, the sardonic old psychiatrist (Pierre Larquey) documents the contamination of suspicion as if charting a mounting fever. The Raven signing them is Poe's, of course, Henri-Georges Clouzot does it justice with virulent chiaroscuro and lugubrious eroticism, not a searchlight but a swinging bare bulb throwing illumination and shadows in equal measure. "De l'encre qui fait couler du sang." Missives fall out of funeral hearses and descend from church lofts, the accused matron scurries through slanted streets to face a cracked mirror. (Dreyer shot Day of Wrath around the same time.) "Are you religious?" "I'm cautious. When in doubt, I take out insurance." Between film noir and horror, a great satire of small-town life as if drawn by Daumier. By the end there's no redemption of character or restoration of order, just the skulking figure of Sylvie's mourning mother turned avenging angel. Goebbels saw propaganda and postwar authorities saw malicious defeatism, in reality Clouzot was merely reminding audiences of Renoir's full dictum: "The truly terrible thing is that everyone has their reasons." Cinematography by Nicolas Heyer. With Antoine Balpetré, Jeanne Fusier-Gir, Noël Roquevert, Pierre Bertin, Louis Seigner, and Roger Blin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |