48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Confessions of a Priest, August 24, 2002
This review is from: Diary of a Country Priest [VHS] (VHS Tape)
I have not yet seen Bresson's earliest film The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne. That film was based on a Denis Diderot novel and that is not surprising as the Bresson films I have seen all have a distinctive literary quality. Diary Of A Country Priest as well as A Man Esaped(based on a memoir) & Pickpocket(based on a Dostoyevsky story) are all stories narrated to us by the protaganist. Diary of A Country Priest may be the most literary of them all for this film focuses almost exclusively on the thought processes of the priest. He tells his own story as though it were a confession. Bresson was a devout Roman Catholic but you don't have to be religious to appreciate this film because the priest struggles not so much with his faith but with his place in society. The film is quiet and is centered in this priests lonely introspections. He struggles not with faith but with making contact with another human being. Strangely enough his beliefs make him an outcast even to the other priests as they are much more practical minded and see the church as providing a practical social function. The other priests may believe in God but they live in the world comfortably. The young priest though is not practical and his religious feelings make him unable to function on any practical level. He has faith and yet he makes many of the villagers uncomfrotable because he is not a friendly gregarious presence as some of the other preists are but a quiet solemn one. He is really incapable of living on the surface of life and so he is incapable of the friendly kind of chatter that wins friends so when he goes on his rounds from home to home his social awkwardness tends to make people feel a bit uncomfortable. However when one woman has a true crisis of faith he is there for her in a way that one can see that it is this kind of situation he was made for. One of the more interesting and lighter aspects of the story is a friendship that develops between the priest and a young village girl. The girl is a rebel and tells lies and is drawn toward anything but the contemplative kind of life the priest lives and yet the two get along very well. The two both feel isolated from others for different reasons but somehow they provide each other with an interesting kind of company.
I think A Man Escaped & Pickpocket though both also quiet films are probably each more accessible than this one. A Man Escaped is about a resistance fighter who plans an elaborate escape from a Nazi prison, so though quiet and intorospective in its way we know there will eventually be a climax when he makes his attempted escape. Pickpocket is also very introspective but its a study of a criminal mind with plenty of exciting thefts and it ends with promise that the criminal has found something worth living for and so will change his ways. Diary of A Country Priest is quiet all the way through. There is beauty in it but its an austere kind of beauty. This film compared to A Man Escaped & Pickpocket takes a lot more patience and has the least entertainment value but provides the deepest and richest experience. Its a one of a kind film for a very discerning kind of filmgoer. All of Bressons films are made with great care (he took 3-4 years to make each one) and this one any filmgoer will be able to see is the one he put the most care into.
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Strange and Beautiful Film, February 6, 2004
By A Customer
Diary of a Country Priest, which made Bresson a name in French cinema, is one of the most perplexing films I've ever seen, despite being one of his earliest. Here he begins developing the minimalistic style that would mature throughout the rest of his unprolific career. The editing is furious and bizarre, unlike anything in any other film. Long, forboding shots of natural settings are closed in by barrages of short, clausterphobic indoor shots. Scenes often begin in the middle, or even after the important dramatic events. What I noticed most of all is that sound often preceeds the image -- and many time the screen is black for several seconds, leaving the viewer to absorb and reflect solely on the audio before the visuals kick in. And, oddly enough, reading of the diary is accompanied by the actual shot of the priest writing, defying the cinematic "rule" that sound isn't needed. Bresson makes full use of all cinematic effects, and listening to this film is as important as watching it.
The film is adapted from the French conservative Catholic novelist Bernanos's book of the same title. It is faithful to some degree, but with small, very important departures. A young, sickly priest arrives in a miserable French village and is immediately outcasted by the townspeople. Living off of hard bread and sugared wine (one of many almost too-obvious religious symbols), he desperately tries to make a spiritual difference in the town. The more he tries, however, the more suspicion and scandal is heaped on him by the townspeople, especially the local count, who entertains a mistress while his wife and daughter fall into a bottomless pit of morbidity and hatred. His spiritual failures are echoed by his physical weakness, and at last his constitution gives out.
The relationship between the material and the physical is, it seems to me, the most important theme. The Priest's failure to impact the worldly affairs of the town reveals the deep, frustrating relationship between these two worlds. The young Priest's frail physical being is in complete contrast with his saintliness and spiritual strength. The relationship here, too, is complicated. The physical weakness seems to point to a spiritual malady, as his physical isolation increases his spiritual doubt. The memorable performance of the ghastly thin and pale Claude Laydu as the Priest shows us a man, or rather a child, being crushed under these tremendous pressures. This is a film about man's loneliness, hardship, and, most of all, his failures.
Another reviewer complains about the quality of this transfer. This surprises me, since Criterion has done an excellent job here. I simply don't see the problems they're referring to. Digitally Obsessed gave it an A grade, saying, "This is really just a stunning transfer, with strong blacks and nuance throughout the black-and-white palette; occasionally things look a little gauzy, but that seems to be due to some inferior source material, and no fault of the transfer." I completely agree.
This is a beautiful film, and I'm glad to finally see it on DVD. In many ways it reminds me of Bergman's Winter Light, and its worth noting that Tarkovsky considered this his favorite film (Bergman's a close second). Criterion's transfer is, as usual, striking -- well worth the heavy price tag. The promised extra 11 minutes of deleted scenes didn't materialize, since Bresson's estate made it known that they didn't want the scenes released. This makes the extras seem extremely sparse: a trailer and an audio commentary track by Peter Cowie (which is some times insightful, some times rambling). Nevertheless, ita an extraordinary and unique film that all film lovers should look into.
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