Ticket deal: 5 films for €45 / 10 films for €80 available from the Box Office or on 01 679 3477.

In German-occupied France, the populace of a provincial town are plagued by a series of anonymous poison-pen letters signed by ‘The Raven’; and fear soon leads to paranoia, accusations and betrayal. Clouzot’s second and most controversial film was made during the Occupation under the German-run production company Continental, in Vichy France. Misinterpreted after the war as anti-French propaganda, Clouzot was accused of collaboration and banned for several years from making other films.

Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard

This screening will be introduced by Dr Douglas Smith, Senior Lecturer, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, UCD.

We are delighted to present four features by writer/director Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977), which established him as a master of suspense, often termed ‘the French Hitchcock’. Dark, stylish, with an uncomfortable realism, Clouzot’s cinema brings us critique of bourgeois society, human obsession, neurosis, anxiety, paranoia and fear, all in meticulously detailed, atmospheric scenes and with wonderful turns by some of the great postwar French actors –Pierre Fresnay, Bernard Blier, Louis Jouvet, Paul Meurisse, Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, and without forgetting his wife Véra Clouzot. Click for details.

Programme organised with the support of the Institut Français, Paris and the French Embassy in Ireland. Special thanks to Christine Houard, Institut Français; Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Ireland.

Screening as part of the IFI French Film Festival – November 14th to 25th