Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de campagne)

DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (Journal d'un curé de campagne)        A
France  (110 mi)  1951  d:  Robert Bresson

Easily the most personal film in Bresson’s lifetime, a deeply Catholic experience that comes closest to defining his mortal soul.  This is the film that set the tone for Bresson films to follow, all dealing with grace and redemption, spare, minimalist, no excess emotion, without a single shot that is not needed, carefully creating a visual sphere of what it is to be human, recreating mechanical gestures, physical movements, parts of the body, like hands and feet, using a voiceover narration that reads what the audience sees written into a Priest’s diary (in Bresson’s own hand, by the way), adapting a novel written by Catholic author Georges Bernanos, who also wrote Mouchette (1967), perhaps approaching the concept of God’s grace from opposite directions.  Non-professional actor Claude Laydu, a devout Catholic who spent several months fasting and living among priests prior to the film, is excellent as the frail young country Priest who feels irrelevant to the surrounding rural community that all but ignores him.  Eating little more than stale bread mixed with wine due to a painful stomach condition, he struggles to fight against his own physical and human limitations throughout the entire film, where he approaches each person from the position of goodness, love, and God’s grace, person to person, soul to soul, never proselytizing or reading scripture, never defending his own actions, but taking the unpopular view that we can all grow closer to God in the way we lead our lives, something mocked and scoffed at as irrelevant and naïve by most, yet he persists, never gaining the upper hand, but matching the cynicism of the local community that feel church only exists for marriages, funerals and Sunday services.  The Priest, on the other hand, sees every living moment as a conversation between heaven and earth, where humans can only persevere to lead better lives and become more devout believers.  

Of interest, there is a musical score by Jean-Jacques Grunenwald that plays throughout, though never interfering or rising at climactic moments, also several of the central characters had professional film careers, including Nicole Maurey as Miss Louise, the only one to attend mass every day, but also the mistress of the richest and most influential man in town, the Count (Jean Riveyre) and his wife the Countess (Rachel Bérendt), whose spoiled and manipulative daughter Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral) generates much of the action by feigning thoughts of suicide (Ladmiral committed suicide in real life 7 years later) in order to prompt the young Priest’s urgent involvement in her unhappy family life, taking advantage of his inexperience and naïveté, but he soon finds himself wallowing in turbulent waters, especially facing the unruffled pillars of high society in the well educated and placidly confident Countess who has little use for the Priest’s ideas, finding him childish and out of place, but politely tolerates his presence in her home, all leading to one particular moment in the film, a transcendent moment that is excruciatingly intense, where the core of a man's beliefs are challenged, even shattered momentarily, but where the Priest exercises his free will as a man in the hands of God, acting on his own terms in accordance with spiritual values, not those of the local church and social hierarchy, but surprisingly persuasive nonetheless in order to ascend to a place reached by no one else in the film, and certainly no one else we know in our own lives. This character's struggle can’t help but guide our own actions, which is the effect of the film, turning this socially isolated and personally anguished individual into a modern day saint, where leading by example brings us closer to a state of grace.   

As it happens in small towns, the Priest’s presence becomes fodder for gossip and scandal, where the Count and his bratty daughter start vicious rumors about having him removed for needlessly interfering in his family affairs, whose own scandalous behavior, of course, is wiped under the rug in an attempt to divert attention away from his own public scrutiny.  An elderly Priest (Adrien Borel) is brought in to consult with the young priest, finding no fault in his scrupulous methods, understanding that Priests are not expected to be liked, but feared and respected through the implementation of rigid discipline and authority, reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov where the church would no longer recognize the humble origins of a human Christ even if He should return, having converted Him into eternal perfection incapable of human flaws.  But this young Priest has no use for implementing a fictitious or condescending order in the universe that he doesn’t believe in himself, instead finding each day such a painful struggle that he has his own personal difficulties praying, feeling himself unworthy.  This struggle takes an interesting turn by the end, where the Priest gets a taste of his own mortality, growing weak and delirious from his illness, having visions blend into real life that can only exist in a Bresson film, where he remains the picture of innocence throughout, guided perhaps by the purity of youth, the uncorrupted souls, where he continually walks among them to become an illuminating light.  There’s a wonderful image of the Priest riding on the back of a young man’s motorcycle that nearly brings a smile to his face, another image of liberation and transcendence.  While the Priest is completely unassuming, there are prevalent images of iron gates, as if a human life is imprisoned in pride and arrogance while on earth unless adopting a spiritual transformation of forgiveness and love, learning to love even one’s enemies, lessening the weight on each human soul that has its own baggage to carry.  There are Christ-like references throughout, a profoundly contemplative work where pain and suffering may be the conduit that drives us closer to the Divine.  One of the great religious works, rivaling Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), one that turns questions of the everlasting into an everyday, ordinary experience.     

Mouchette

MOUCHETTE            A-                  

France  (78 mi)  1967  d:  Robert Bresson

MOUCHETTE has always suffered from coming so close on the heels to Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), sharing so many of the downbeat aspects of the human condition, where unfortunately it will always remain second fiddle in that regard, as MOUCHETTE explores human misery while BALTHAZAR defines poetic grace.  Adapted from a novel by Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, who also wrote Diary of a Country Priest, it’s as if Bresson decided to make a film accentuating a world without God, coinciding, perhaps, with Ingmar Bergman’s Trilogy (1961 – 1963) of chamber dramas, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence, exploring a crisis of faith in the modern age, each deeply personal films utilizing little dialog, isolated settings, and searing performances from an exceptional group of actors. 

Bresson creates perhaps his bleakest film, nothing less than the descent of Man, a heartbreakingly sad portrait of human suffering as seen through the life of a young 14-year old girl, the beautifully expressive non-professional Nadine Nortier, the only film she ever made, whose descent into abject hopelessness becomes a parable for the absence of God, as she has nowhere to turn, no friend to call upon, and no way to stop the bleeding without taking her own life.  What’s particularly devastating is the way she is beaten down into submission, a brutal exposé of the torment of an innocent soul, an interesting comment on the similar treatment of Christ, but Bresson’s film offers no transcendence from Calvary, no ascension into heaven, no spiritual relief, only the portrayal of a human crucifixion.

Using unrelentingly raw detail in a world stripped of artifice, much of the film plays out like a crime scene, as if we in the audience are implicated for the sin we are about to witness, as in Catholicism, suicide is a sin, where we must collectively bear responsibility, each of us in our own way.  This plays out like a kind of living theater, where having born witness to this kind of earthly torment, the audience must find a way to be reborn and find spiritual renewal.  Do we relapse into the same old bad habits, showing indifference to the suffering of others, or does this film literally touch the soul? 

Opening and closing with sacred music from Monteverdi’s “Magnificat” Monteverdi "Magnificat" fragment (Vespers of 1610) on YouTube (11:19), Bresson frames the film in the beauty of Renaissance classicism and what would be considered the heart of European civilization.  The startling opening question is asked by Mouchette's dying mother even before the credits appear, “What will they become without me?”  Much like BALTHAZAR, we return to the same rural countryside setting, focus on another teenage girl’s experience, and follow another path of human mistreatment and cruelty.  However in this film, Mouchette is already an outcast, mistreated by her dysfunctional parents, excluded by others at school, the object of namecalling and derision, even mistreated by her teacher, driven to tears, seen here:  Mouchette on YouTube (2:14) in a lamenting song of despair aboard the ship of Columbus, believing they are lost at sea and doomed, crying out “Hope, Hope Is Dead.”  

Relentlessly dour, the portrait of an unsympathetic world, there are dual narratives, the rape of nature and man, where one metaphorically comments upon the rabbit hunting sequence from Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), where a gamekeeper and a poacher are at odds, where the matter of justice in the wild is seen as a violation against nature, where hunters can be seen shooting rabbits at will, where overpowering force tips the balance of man against nature, while the other allows a troubled and wayward girl to get lost in a storm and lose her way, never managing to find her way back, showing events taking place over the course of a 24-hour day. 

Making her way through life friendless and alone, Bresson’s narrative is uncompromising throughout, where Nortier’s face is the picture of bewilderment, continually used to hardship and solitude and abuse, as nothing else exists for her in the harsh conditions of rural life, where the influence of traditional support from family and church are absent.  While she’s something of a tomboy forced to fend for herself, she also exhibits moments of tenderness and fragility, where her need for human contact is so overwhelming that she confuses physical abuse with compassion, where the person offering her the most kindness also rapes her.  Where does one turn when there is no one?  Without faith, her life is a spiraling descent into the void of worthlessness.  If faith is to be found in this film, it must come from the audience.