Two years ago, screenwriter Diablo Cody was in the middle of trying to write “a very big, commercial, four-quadrant movie” when she gave birth to her third child. After her first two kids, she had gotten back in the groove of work, but this time, shattered by exhaustion, she felt herself floundering..

It's hard to say what is more astonishing about Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Le Corbeau,” a savage feature that's been called the most controversial film in French history. Is it Clouzot’s icy, misanthropic view of human nature, his pitiless dissection of the French character or that this fil..