Well. I read this and that, patient #13's mother flying away like the angel of death, or transforming in a raven, etc. But this is not the final picture of the film.
"Le Corbeau" last frame is made of... kids playing on cobblestones. Kids (I mean kids, children, not adolescents) are a leitmotiv in this movie.
Is there any film-buff, moviegoer, Clouzot's lover, to give me a clue for this presence, and especially to explain that last picture?
hey there my impression was that the kids can be / are just as capable of the trouble that the town has been enduring - the girl with the glasses was implicated several times throughout the movie and we are reminded again at the end - just as the light swinging back and forth and the nun-as-raven/patient-as-raven-as-angel-of-death motifs suggest, there is no clear line between good and evil or dark and light - in this french town, though the *evil* has been resolved at the end, and outed, the capability for it exists in each and every resident, as was evident in their behavior and the secrets that emerged...
in other words, a sunny town filled with children playing in the streets and religious figures circulating the sidewalks is actually just a frothing nest of secrets bubbling just under the surface... hitchcock and david lynch, plus half of the rest of the movies, have similar themes...