(1947) Saucy go-getter Suzy Delair’s Jenny Lamour (“a voluptuous slut” – Pauline Kael) warms up an entertainment-starved Paris music hall audience with a swing of her ineffably euphemistic “tra-la-la,” part of the arsenal of charms she uses in her breakthrough to the big time. It also means suggestive publicity photos taken by sympathetic lesbian photographer Simone Renant, and a nocturnal meeting with a sleazy movie financier. But then congenitally jealous accompanist husband Bernard Blier issues an all-too-public death threat against the dirty old fogey. So when the financier winds up très mort, Blier becomes the prime suspect at Quai des Orfèvres, France’s Scotland Yard equivalent. Enter Inspector Louis Jouvet (“the greatest theater man of his generation and one of the half-dozen great screen actors” – David Shipman), who begins to take apart Blier’s meticulous alibi... Brilliantly transforming a classic whodunnit plot, Clouzot, “the French Hitchcock,” takes us from the wings and dressing rooms of the Parisian music hall to the drab, airless corridors and holding cells of the Quai’s Criminal Investigations Department, in a blend of social realism and psychological cruelty that became his trademark. One of the unrecognized masterpieces of the post-war French cinema, a Noir tour de force that won Clouzot the coveted Best Director prize at Venice. 4K DCP restoration. Approx. 106 min.
Presented with support from The George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema.
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE
A new 4K restoration of Clouzot’s early Noir masterpiece LE CORBEAU will run at Film Forum, April 20 - May 1 (our last repertory screenings before renovation).
FRI/TUE/WED 2:00 5:20 7:30 9:40
SAT 12:30 2:40 4:50 7:00 9:20
SUN 3:20 5:30 7:40 9:50
MON/THU 3:00 5:20 10:00
Friday, April 13 - Thursday, April 19
BUY TICKETS ($9.00 Member, $15.00 Regular)
“DEMANDS TO BE SEEN AGAIN AND AGAIN.”
– Luc Sante
“A KNOCK-OUT FILM NOIR.”
– Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“A stunningly well-made entertainment... in this country it never got the audience it deserved.”
– Pauline Kael
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