The spurned and vengeful woman of Bresson's Dames au Bois de Boulogne (1946), the young suitor avenging the murder (by her lover) of the woman he has loved from a distance in Lacombe's Martin Roumagnac (1946), youth's revenge on being cheated by the war in Autant-Lara's Le Diable au corps (1946), the harrying of a Jew to his death in Duvivier's Panique (1946) and a number of Simenon and Steeman thriller adaptations rife with violence and revenge--all of these films attest to a need to project the immediate past on to a different set of narratives that are removed from the immediate arena of guilt (although Panique comes uncomfortably close).
Duvivier
Simenon