Le Corbeau (1943) on Netflix
NR19431h 32m
Anonymous letters signed Le Corbeau accuse doctor Rémy Germain of an affair with Laura Vorzet and of performing illegal abortions. Soon other residents of the town receive letters too.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.8/1012,025 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
The residents of a small French town begin receiving anonymous letters signed Le Corbeau. The first letters target doctor Rémy Germain, accusing him of an affair with Laura Vorzet, the wife of the psychiatrist Dr. Vorzet, and of performing illegal abortions. Germain works alongside Vorzet at the local hospital, and Laura's sister, the nurse Marie Corbin, works in the town's infirmary. Copies reach village leaders, and more letters name other townspeople, each one exposing something a neighbor would rather keep quiet. The accusations set the inhabitants against one another, and even as the letters reach more houses they keep coming back to Germain.
Cast
- Liliane Maignéas Rolande Saillens
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Le Corbeau (1943)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The political backlash over Le Corbeau got director Henri-Georges Clouzot banned for life from directing in France; the ban was lifted in 1947, but the film remained suppressed until 1969.
- Vichy's right-wing government pulled Le Corbeau from theaters over the immorality of its characters and its references to the destructive practice of informing on neighbors, and after France's liberation the political left also backed censoring it as contradicting the notion that France had been a nation of heroic resisters.
- The film is loosely based on an anonymous letter case that began in Tulle, Limousin, in 1917, where the letters were signed "the eye of the tiger"; Louis Chavance wrote the first version of the screenplay shortly after those Tulle letters, years before the film was produced.
- In 2006, Le Corbeau enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in Paris after the Clearstream affair, in which anonymous letters accused French politicians of having hidden bank accounts.
