(1943)
Dir - Henri-Georges Clouzot
Overall: GOOD
His final work for the Nazi-run production company Continental Films, Le Corbeau, (The Raven), is renowned director Henri-Georges Clouzot's examination of French society's complex feelings towards the German occupation and the ensuing fear mongering and paranoia that goes along with it. Set in a nondescript village that is deliberately labeled as "anywhere", poison pen letters become the talk of the town, all of which either directly target or eventually lead to Pierre Fresnay's emotionally detached doctor who engages in an affair or two while also performing maybe abortions on the down-low. Though we eventually get an answer as to who the culprit is, Clouzot and co-screenwriter Louis Chavance's script is not structured or preoccupied merely with whodunit motifs. It is a tale about what happens to people who are susceptible to gossip when such scandalous hearsay can push everyone to a point where few can be trusted and all can be suspected. After the war, the movie garnished Clouzot a temporary ban from his home country due to his compliance with the German-controlled French film company, not to mention the anti-French slant that can be read into the material where compliance breeds turmoil. Clouzot nevertheless proves himself here as a stylized expert in suspense, sly humor, and symbolism.
(1947)
Dir - Mauricio Magdaleno
Overall: WOOF
Writer/director Mauricio Magdaleno's Le herencia de la Llorona, (The Heritage of the Crying Woman), is easily one of the weakest takes on the La Llorona legend, but even calling this a "take" on it would be misleading. Instead, we have a drab melodrama involving family squabbles, with one quasi-supernatural sequence occurring midway through. Most Mexican genre film from the period were equipped with a comic relief character, and such a role is handled by Agustín Isunza who of course does nothing funny, yet he does come off as a coward in his small handful of scenes. The film was likely done on a minuscule budget due to it all taking place at a single location, having no special effect shots of any kind, and Magdaleno maintaining a torturous pace that plays out almost entirely in wide shots where everyone either gets all of their uninteresting dialog out of the way or creeps around slowly while the stock music hints at something sinister going on. No one on screen comes off as annoying, but the story is dull in every last one of its attributes, toiling around a patriarch dying, an asshole inheriting her estate, two people who want to get married and are then not allowed to get married after they were allowed to get married, and some other people trying to help solve a mystery that is fittingly anticlimactic.
(1949)
Dir - Kiyohiko Ushihara
Overall: MEH
A Western-styled sci-fi/old dark house hybrid, Nijiotoko, (The Rainbow Man), was the last movie from director Kiyohiko Ushihara who switched careers to become a film teacher for several decades following. We have rivaling reporters of different sexes, a weird family headed by a mad scientist who studies rainbows because sure why not, an also mad son who is a painter, a mysterious house fire, the police suspecting the wrong person, and of course a guy going around with rainbow powers after an experiment went awry. Even though there is no supernatural ingredients and it follows a standard murder mystery trajectory, it is all gothic spookiness as far as the atmosphere goes, largely taking place in a big ole house with faulty railings and wailing winds outside. The pacing is dreadful and the odd elements like a family being cursed by rainbows and not even being allowed to talk about them are played straight, giving the film little intrigue to keep things going during larges sections where either nothing is happening or nothing of interest is happening. Coming from Japan, it is a unique mix of Poverty Row tropes from across the Pacific, but it should be approached for historical curiosity only.
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