Customer Reviews

Diary of a Country Priest [VHS]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

Bresson's screen adaptation of Bernanos' novel brilliantly plumbs the depths of one soul's quest for redemption. This film is a stirring masterpiece to be viewed time and again even by those to whom the overt religiosity may seem somewhat daunting. As the doomed country priest persecuted to martyrdom by virtually everyone around him, Claude Laydu turns in a remarkably nuanced performance. But it is Bresson's humanism which suffuses the work with its unique ardor and beauty. Needless to say a film of this depth of feeling could never be produced in today's rampantly commercial celluloid world! Forever Diary of a Country Priest will stand as a testament to the amazing creative genius of the peerless French director Robert Bresson.

Bresson set himself a special challenge in making a movie whose central drama is the writing of a diary. How do you make writing exciting on the screen, and how do you film the inwardness of a private journal?

Bresson approaches the problem by filling the screen with Laydu's starved, haunting face at every opportunity. Plot, dialogue and acting take a back seat to the actor's troubled expressions, which Bresson shoots from a number of dramatic angles, especially the zoom-in close-up. While this does a lot to build atmosphere, it also left huge holes in my understanding of this troubled priest and his crisis. I found myself getting bored at yet another seemingly aimless scene where Laydu shivers or prays or writes in his journal. Bresson's technique is so effective that I felt I got the point--I had the essence of the character--after the first couple scenes. Still, the images of Laydu on a motorcycle and his midnight collapse in the country are unforgettable.

Bresson's ideas about film are sometimes said to be more interesting than the films themselves. I'm not sure that's fair, but it certainly helps to know something about his hopes for making film a language of its own, free from the conventions of the theater, in approaching this quiet & arresting work.

Andrei Tarkovsky said once in an interview that among all the directors who made films of a spiritual nature,(among them Mizoguchi,Bergman, and Kurosawa) Bresson was the most lauded example. This was enough to send me in a frantic hurry to see every one of Bresson's movies. Pickpocket, A Man Escaped, and The Devil Probably were the ones which stood out for me the most, but it was The Diary of a Country Priest,which I saw lastly, that best represented his cinematic vision.(for me) There is almost always a character in his films that takes primacy throughout: Tarkovsky was right in seeing the internal strife of the individual in all of his films, and it is this quality in Diary which creates an absence in the film to which we are given only a glimpse through intricate gestures of the face and by the subtlety of the narrative. The man who played the priest was tremendous not because of any acting, but because of his sheer presence, which was simultaneously an absence. The journal entries are beautifully written and concurrently portray the life of a priest and how any sense of such a Life's selfhood is dispersed into the characters and settings of his periphery. I think this is important because otherwise the film would completely flounder under the weight of an enigma, and the viewer would be completely denied access to such a rich character. It is through his relationship with other members of the parish that we get to know this priest,(not completely I might add) and not simply by the actor who played the role. I really feel that this movie is as a whole the best of Bresson.

Bresson is in a class by himself.He isn't so much a filmmaker as a poet, a haiku poet at that. His images are out of a dream or else they evoke the language of the spirit not the flesh. You can feel hypnotized by the pace of his films only to wake up and have his vision seared into your psyche forever. This film is told in strange and haunting scenes. The Country Priest in the title is a young man, pale, solemn and sincere and ultimately doomed. He is like Jesus in that he sees the beauty of the world but suffers from the beauty. He is reviled for his purity and his innocence is his undoing. In many ways it is hard to explain the character or the film but it is like a cloud of smoke on a cool, wet day in the turning of the season.

Through the journaling of a young priest the audience can follow the priest's first assignment as he is managing the small parish Ambricourt, which is located on the French countryside. As swiftly as the priest arrives he is discouraged by the unfriendly atmosphere that surrounds him in the village. His discouragement leads him on a path of spiritual and cerebral suffering as he struggles with his faith in God and humanity. Besides the intellectual struggle the priest is suffering physically from an illness in his abdomen that has forced him on a rare diet based on old bread that he softens in sweetened wine. Unselfishly, the priest continues to face-up to the adversity of his environment as he clasps on to remains of his minuscule faith. Bresson's vision of the priest is visually stunning as the film emotionally draws the audience into a vortex of thoughts, feelings, and presence. In the process, Bresson communicates his philosophical message with daunting simplicity as he removes all the miscues that could distort his position. This leaves the viewer with an utterly brilliant cinematic experience as one can sense and reflect on Bresson's revelation of a country priest.

Possibly the diary itself should have been excluded in this transition of the Georges Bernanos novel to film. The book allowed the diary passages, which by book's end swelled in emotional intensity, to serve as evidence to the sainthood of the young country priest who believes himself a failure at uplifting the spirit of his depressed parish. Here, the diary passages, although sometimes humanely profound, contol the film systematically as a tool to forward the plot, and never successfully reveal the character.

If you've never been moved by French author, Bernanos' powerful book, it's cinema counterpart may seem only dull and religious. If you have taken the book to heart however, there is a lot to admire here. The cold rural atmosphere can be felt like a chill to the bone in the bold, stark, black and white cinematography. The character actors surrounding the priest are a solid wall of antagonizing support. The young priest's joyous motorcycle ride is captured exactly as the book intended, as an unexpected escape from his mundane and painful life.


Claude Layduin, in the title role, is often moving as the sole god-fearing man in a village of depraved religious intention, but his wise, godlike stares away from the camera, as if into the mist, upset the ignorance and humility of the character, who never for a moment believes himself to be worthy of God, the essence of the novel.

This classic French film seems to be a victim of mixed reviews since it's 1950 premier. It would seem admirers of the book will also admire the film. Those unaware of the novel, may find it's greatest aspects here as well.

Bresson's exquisite, quietly affecting study of a young priest's spiritual travails remains one of the great achievements of world cinema. Adapted from the novel by George Bernanos, "Priest" is decidedly minimalist in style, with Laydu's supremely restrained performance eliciting our empathy and subtly attuning us to his character's inner struggles. Bresson handles the details brilliantly, his unadorned elegance and intensity permeating the mood, set design, and action. "Priest" is a sublime film that will reward attentive viewers with a profound meditation on life, faith, and purpose.

"When art merges with mysticism, he can only be patient and as empty as possible" Sontag; from the book Transcendenal Style in Film by Paul Schrader. sums it up for me.

The movie is very slow paced . The dialogue and the action mirror each other..a technique Sontag coined "doubling" - to intensify and cast suspicion on the minutia of ordinary every day life.

I got my video 15 years ago (along w Pickpocket and Mouchette) by a company called NOW SHOWING. Its very scratchy and you can hear the film running. But I love them anyway.

This movie is not for everyone..To some - watching it will be a "Holy Agony"