“It’s horrible to admit, but evil is a necessity,” says a character in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “The Raven” (1943). It certainly is in Clouzot’s noirish vision of the world, one filled with deranged composers of malevolent missives; lascivious, hunchbacked show-biz promoters; venal oil-company magnates; and infernal mistresses. Often referred to as the “French Hitchcock” for his nail biting plots, Clouzot was also a crafty cynic, and depravity, villainy, and wickedness play crucial roles in his plots. “Murder and Malice: Henri-Georges Clouzot,” unspooling at BAM through March 2, presents seven films by the master of misanthropy, long overdue for rediscovery.

It was precisely Clouzot’s sharp, sour view of humanity that made “The Raven” (screening February 18), his second feature, the subject of a career derailing controversy. One of the few French directors to continue working during the German occupation of France, Clouzot released the movie through Continental Films, a Nazi-run company. After the war “The Raven” was denounced as anti-French Nazi propaganda, leading to Clouzot’s temporary suspension from the film industry. But with the benefit of hindsight it looks much different.

Set in an unnamed French hamlet – identified only as “a small town, here or elsewhere” – “The Raven” looks at provincials spiraling into hysteria, cowardice, and paranoia after a rash of poison-pen letters plagues their village. All the leads are marked by mental or physical defect: Dr. Germain (Pierre Fresnay) is a tormented abortionist; Denise (Ginette Leclerc), Germain’s wanton lover, limps without her orthopedic boot; Dr. Vorzet (Pierre Larquey), a pillar of the community, is secretly addicted to morphine. The film is cunning yet merciless.

In his return to moviemaking, Clouzot leavened his pessimism with chirpy musical numbers in 1947 “Quai des Orfevres” (February 27), an enchanting combination of the policier and the backstager. Ripe, lusty dancehall sensation Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) dazzles the crowd with her hit “Avec son Tra-la-la” but incurs jealous rages in her mopey, rotund husband, Maurice (Bernard Blier). When Brignon (Charles Dullin), a lecherous entrepreneur who had shown an avid interest in “advancing” Jenny’s career, turns up dead, sad sack Maurice is the prime suspect in the investigation led by Detective Antoine (Louis Jouvet), a world-weary smart aleck who’s hopelessly devoted to his young biracial son.

But Antoine’s not the only one who feels such intense attachment. One of the great sapphic screen presences, Dora (Simone Renant), a handsomely dressed photographer who sports a pullover with her name proudly emblazoned on it, lives downstairs from Jenny and Maurice and is mad about the chanteuse. “I’m a funny kind of girl,” Dora coyly says to Maurice as plumes of her cigarette smoke enhalo her.

Homoeroticism also courses through 1953’s “Wages of Fear”(February 19 & 20), a brutal, harrowing depiction of four discontented men stuck in a sleazy, dead-end South American town who agree to transport highly explosive nitroglycerine for a ruthless American petrol executive. Hunky Mario (Yves Montand) develops a bit of a crush on Jo (Charles Vanel): “I met a man. Happens to be a real one,” Mario crows, provoking the jealousy of his roommate Luigi (Folco Lulli).

The bond unravels rapidly, however, during the treacherous 300-mile delivery route. “I’ve died 50 times since last night,” Jo cries to Mario on the second day of their sweat-soaked journey. Viewers, too, find their hearts stopping several times throughout the film, knowing that at any time everything could, literally, go up in flames.

Someone – it would be criminal to say who (“Don’t tell them what you saw” exhorts a closing intertitle to the audience) – actually dies from fright in 1955’s “Diabolique” (February 26), perhaps Clouzot’s best-known film. Two schoolteachers – high-strung, pious Christina (Vera Clouzot, the director’s wife) and butch, calculating Nicole (Simone Signoret) – kill sadistic Michel (Paul Meurisse), who is Christina’s husband and Nicole’s lover. Or did they? Apparently even Hitchcock himself was scared by “Diabolique” and wanted “Psycho” to outdo Clouzot’s terrifying twists.

Even in Clouzot’s most joyful film, the documentary “The Mystery of Picasso” (March 2), there are moments of pulse-quickening anxiety. “We’d love to know that secret process guiding the creator through his perilous adventures,” Clouzot says in voiceover at the documentary’s beginning, which captures the bare-chested artist making more than a dozen paintings on a translucent canvas – all of which were destroyed upon the film’s completion.

At one point the pipe-smoking Clouzot somewhat nervously tells the painter that he has only five minutes of film left. Will Picasso beat the clock? “You wanted drama, you got it,” the Spanish master tells the helmer. Those who want stylish suspense and wily pessimism will get it at BAM.

Until March 2 (30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100).