Produced by a Nazi-controlled studio in occupied France, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau is a stunning work of craftsmanship, restraint, and tension set in a small town in the French countryside (“A small town…anywhere”), a clever whodunit — or a whowroteit, to be precise — in which the culprit isn’t committing murders but destroying reputations by sending anonymous letters accusing local residents of adultery, abortion, and worse. The central character, Dr. Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), is both the most targeted and the most likely to solve the case. As tensions flare and gossip spreads, residents become impatient until, based on circumstantial evidence, the unlikable nurse Marie Corbin (Héléna Manson) is scapegoated and sent to prison. Soon after, however, the letters resume, one floating down from the church rafters during a crowded mass as if an accusation from God. With endless layers of interpretation, including through a lens of Christian morality (each scene in the local Catholic church is interrupted by the arrival of sin), Clouzot’s grandest theme is the paranoia, distrust, and disloyalty of human beings under threat, the film’s anonymous little town filling in for all of Vichy France, its characters resorting to snooping, spying, and stealing in an effort to point the finger toward anyone else. Clouzot’s pristine compositions are breathtaking as usual, a dangling lamp swinging between good and evil as morality is discussed underneath, the camera’s extremely low angle representing a stray letter’s point of view underfoot at a funeral procession, harrowing Dutch angles as the terrified nurse is chased through the streets by a vengeful mob chanting her name.