One of the less-noted benefits of living in Toronto is the whole French TV thing. Due to an obscure regulation from the Trudeau era, cable companies are required to provide French-language channels equal to the number of Francophones currently resident in Toronto. Which means we're now up to four: CBLFT, TFO, TV5, and RDI. (Wait, where did RDI go? Did somebody leave town?) Freed from the unreasonable demands of actual viewers, every one of them offers better programming than the anglo channels; TFO in particular runs great movies, often with surprise value as the TV guide coverage is sketchy. Late Friday night I was hooked by something grainy and enigmatic which eventually resolved itself into a classic of the cinema francais: Le Corbeau, directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot and a safe bet for the best French film of 1943. A tense, queasy-making tale of poison pen letters in a country village, Le Corbeau was banned at the Liberation for giving an, erm, unsympathetic portrait of French provincial life, and blacklisted by the Catholic Church to boot (films à proscrire absolument parce qu'ils sont essentiellement pernicieux au point de vue social, moral ou religieux). Apparently it was made by a German company of collaborationist stripe, but the movie itself is misanthropic in a subversive and implicitly lefty way, much like the creeptastic Bunuel Diary of a Chambermaid. So check it out, and don't say bilingualism never did nothin' for ya.
The post title should be a link: for proof that the interwebs can explain anything, see here.
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