The suffering that the priest endures, and the pettiness and intolerance he witnesses all around are for him simply evidence of the ‘grace’ promised by his faith. (1)Īlthough the film’s theme is religious, it is in no way a strictly religious film. But I was faithful to the spirit of the book and to what it inspired in me as I read it. In I wasn’t faithful to the style of Bernanos, and I omitted details which I disliked. In The Diary of a Country Priest there are many such sparks…. But in every book of his there are sparks, remarkable insights, that are very peculiar and that you do not find in other writers. As he admitted, in a highly rewarding interview with Charles Thomas Samuels: Bresson managed to get the rights to a film adaptation from Bernanos’ estate and turned it into his first masterpiece. The Diary of a Country Priest was first a celebrated novel published in 1936 by the prominent Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, who died in 1948. Refusing to yield to anything resembling ‘audience appeal’ or ‘entertainment values,’ he managed to create for himself a quiet, unostentatious niche in the history of French cinema, earning the grudging respect of critics and slowly acquiring an audience of acolytes. His films, from the 1943 Les Anges du péché until L’Argent in 1983, were testaments to the austerity of his faith and his equally austere technique. Bresson operated under the assumption that there was such a thing as a ‘soul,’ and that, through extreme concentration of style, it could be revealed to the camera and the tape recorder – instruments that, to him, had an almost incantatory power. ‘Austerely Roman Catholic,’ as he has so often been characterized, he sought after effects in his work that cannot properly be quantified. Source: ACMI/NLA Prod Co: UGC Prod: Leon Carre, Robert Sussfeld Dir, Scr: Robert Bresson from the novel by Georges Bernanos Phot: Léonce-Henry Burel Ed: Paulette Robert Art Dir: Pierre Charbonnier Mus: Jean-Jacques GrünenwaldĬast: Claude Laydu, Léon Arvel, Antoine Balpêtré, Jean Danet, Jeanne Étiévant, André Guibert, Bernard Hubrenne, Nicole Maureyįor the uninitiated (somehow, the ecclesiastical word novitiate springs to mind), Robert Bresson must certainly seem the most demanding filmmaker who ever lived. Diary of a Country Priest/ Journal d’un curé de campagne (1950 France 120 mins)

The diary of a country priest book