Journal of a country priest is a film French (1950) of Robert Bresson, inspired by the novel of Georges Bernanos.

Synopsis

The young priest of Ambricourt (Claude Laydu) undergoes the heredity of his family of alcoholics and nourishes only sugar, of bread and bad wine. Its health feels some. It holds a diary on which it lays down the difficulties that it meets to be made accept by its parishioners in this countryside of Artois. The little girls, especially Séraphita (Martine Lemaire) make fun of him with catechism. He entrusts his problems to the priest of Torcy (Armand Guibert) which sends it to be made auscultate by Doctor Delbende (Antoine Balpêtré) and advises to him to advance with prudence to conquer the confidence of its parishioners. The young priest does not take this advice and runs up against the count (Jean Riveyre) who it can be the lover of the teacher (Nicole Maurey) committed to inform his daughter Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral), a teenager who hates her mother (Marie-Monique Arkell). The latter is a woman broken, having lost the faith since the untimely death of her young person wire. The young priest is then upset by the death of Doctor Delbende, a death which resembles a suicide. He heading to want to be to bring back the countess in the religion and he reaches that point. But she dies of an heart attack during the following night. The rumors accuse the priest. He leaves to consult a doctor in Lille and meets the cousin of Chantal before, Olivier (Jean Danet), a man who orders a regiment of the foreign legion. In Lille, the young priest learns that he suffers from a cancer of the stomach. Taken refuge at Dufrety (Bernard Hubrenne), an alive priest défroqué with a woman, it dies by affirming that “all is grace”.

Based on the interior voice of the priest as much as on the filmed sequences, this film is the adaptation of Journal of a country priest , a novel of Georges Bernanos published in 1936 and rewarded by the price for the French Academy.

Faithful to the spirit of the writer, Bresson purifies to the maximum the account by composing a continuation of sequences of a specimen sobriety. So much so that François Truffaut could say of this film, that he admired particularly, that each one of its plans is “as true as a ground handle”. Bresson as much as possible limits the expressions and the intonations of its professional actors (thereafter, he will not work besides any more but with amateurs, than he will call “models”). Imposing a remarkable distance compared to its subject: “a man who tells his perpetual states of heart”, it refuses for any purpose melodramatic and any mystical interpretation.

Film deeply religious and Christian, Journal of a country priest is also the exploration of the behavior of a rebellious being in prey with an obsession, which is a constant in the work of Bresson. Abstaining from all “psychologism”, like whole value judgment, the author only shows what seems to him sufficient to reveal, thus making Newspaper of a country priest a work envoûtante and mysterious.

Grand Prix of the French cinema in 1951, Journal of a country priest also obtained the Prix Louis-Delluc in 1950 and the Grand Prix of the Festival of Venice in 1951.

Data sheet

Distribution

  • Claude Laydu: the priest of Ambricourt
  • Armand Guibert: the priest of Torcy
  • Marie-Monique Arkell: the countess
  • Nicole Ladmiral: Chantal
  • Jean Riveyre: the count
  • Nicole Mauray: Miss Louise

Rewards

  • Price Louis-Delluc 1950
  • Grand Prix, Venice 1950
  • Price Méliès in 1951
  • Price of the OCIC, 1951

Around film

The film is a mixture of dialog and comments, all in grace.

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