Diary of a Country Priest

Critics speak of Robert Bresson's 1950 "Diary of a Country Priest" in reverent stained glass tones. There is often a hushed quality about this criticism, as if the writer were hesitant to discuss what should be ineffable. In fact, "Diary of a Country Priest" is reasonably entertaining and not significantly different in appearance, at least, from conventional Hollywood and European films of its time. The picture is not ponderous or austere in its design. In fact, if anything, the movie is a bit too expansive, contains too many confrontations and subplots and is briskly, if elliptically constructed -- the movie proceeds by way of short, disconnected tableaux-like scenes, generally concluding with a fade to black. If anything, too much material is crammed into a film that seems slightly too short for its ambitions. The result is that the movie seems to stutter slightly -- it is episodic and a little rushed: one calamity proceeding quickly after another in a procession of, more or less, unbroken misery for the doomed country priest. (Bresson's initial cut of this very literal adaptation of Bernanos' novel was more than three hours long and the highly condensed and efficient narrative style exhibited in the 115 minute final cut, an approach to cinema that characterizes all the director's later works, here seems almost accidental, a consequence of ruthless pruning required by the studio before the film was commercially released.) An unnamed young priest appears at a hamlet called Ambricourt where, immediately, all of his parishoners despise and taunt him. The young man seems a little unearthly with a huge and pale spherical head surmounting a stick-like body -- the poor fellow, mysteriously ill with "stomach trouble," looks something like a waxen lollipop. (Pacing about the barren countryside in his jet-black soutaine he looks uncanny, like the figure of Death in Bergman's "The Seventh Seal".) At first, the priest's congregation bullies him and the priest appears to be weak and tentative; he seeks counsel from a wiser and older priest, the Priest of Torcy, who provides a kind of running commentary on his young colleague's travails. The old priest warns the young man against seeking to be liked and says that the maintaining order and discipline in the parish is imperative: every night, the darkness, the Priest of Torcy says, undoes the works of the day. At first, we dislike the callous and rather inquisitorial Priest of Torcy, but as the film develops we grasp that his common-sense and worldly approach to the ministry contrasts starkly with the protagonist's unworldly sanctity - and not always to the benefit of the young priest whose relentless self-doubt and suffering becomes, on occasion, annoying and masochistic. Bresson's genius is allowing both perspectives to exist simulataneously: the young priest is too good for the world and his ministry seems to result in an unbroken succession of misfortunes -- and, yet, at the same time, the hero is undoubtedly some sort of saint, convincingly holy and intensely passionate about his faith. (There is no point in heaping additional praise upon Claude Laydu whose performance as the priest of Ambricourt is beyond reproach, miraculous in itself.) Everyone misunderstands the young man and, in fact, even the film's viewers may have some doubts about him: the young man subsists entirely on old bread boiled in wine and, although at first this seems to be evidence of his holiness, some of the characters, including the Priest of Torcy, think that he is also an alcoholic, the son of alcoholic parents, we learn, and born, as his older colleague, says "pickled in the stuff." (In a characteristically French touch, the Priest of Torcy suggests that the young man would do much better if he were to drink a higher quality wine.) As he wanders through the desolate country, collapsing in the mud, his congregation attributes these misadventures to drunkenness. At the film's midpoint, the country priest achieves a great spiritual victory, converting a woman who has fallen away from her faith because of her baby son's death. The scene involving the confrontation between the priest and this woman, an embittered countess, possesses a remarkable, and thrilling, power -- it is a duel to death between the priest and his quarry, the wounded woman, and one of the most exciting sequences ever committed to film. But the priest's success in this mortal combat with the countess seems to result in her death and he is, then, immediately blamed for engaging in "spiritual blackmail" and imagined to be complicit in the woman's demise. And, indeed, it is both true that the priest saved the woman's soul, accepting the film's theological framework, and brought her peace, while, also, mercilessly bullying her and engaging in questionable tactics to restore her to faith. This is emblematic for the entire film: no good deed committed by the priest goes unpunished and he is continuously misunderstood on all levels by just about everyone he encounters. Further, although there is tangible evidence that the priest might adduce as to his merit -- actual testimonials in writing from people he has helped -- the priest is unwilling to use this ammunition against his well-situated and relentless foes. The film's dialogue is extraordinarily profound -- the priest and those that he opposes continuously say the most startling and brilliant and emotionally moving things to one another. Ultimately, the poor fellow departs his parish, is diagnosed with stomach cancer, a medical conclusion that the audience, particularly those who have seen Kurosawa's "Ikiru" produced in the same year, has long seen looming, and dies. Very late in the film, Bresson (following Bernanos) introduces a dissolute and possibly drug-addicted ex-seminarian and his compassionate mistress into the plot -- this development attenuates some of the force of the film and it seems a bit odd that the priest dies alone and miserable in a squalid apartment far from his equally wretched country parish. Here fideltity to the novel seems to me to slightly weaken the film. Bresson's title is pedantically and literally developed: the movie is not so much about events narrated "in" the diary of the country priest, but, in fact, about the diary itself: in the opening shot, we see the priest begin writing in the diary, and about every three or four minutes, the film dissolves between episodes into another shot of the young man writing in his journal. When the dying priest can no longer hold his diary in his hands and drops the pages to the floor, the film ends. The priest's diary entries are recited on the soundtrack while we see him writing and, then, the events described in the journal are also dramatized pictorially -- hence, we see the priest's story acted-out before us, while at the same time, the narrative is both intoned and simultaneously shown to be written in ink on paper by way of large close-ups of the priest's pen inscribing words in his diary. This curious tripling of the narration (voice-over, written text, and picture) gives the movie its odd sacramental quality -- events have an eerie weight because they are shown, spoken, and written: this pleonastic quality to the film has the effect of giving the picture a massive, impenetrable gravity. The acting is superb and Bresson's camera placement is quietly effective, typically close shots of the priest against a blurred and indistinct background. The script is so highly literate that it would be a pleasure to quote pages and pages of the dialogue: Sin, someone says, is blessed if it teaches us shame; a foreign legionaire tells the doomed priest that he could be his friend if they were in the service together because good combat soldiers are like good priests -- for them, it is "all or nothing." The film is a masterpiece and not as daunting as many of its admirers suggest.