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Faith's death drive, its leaps and hemorrhages, "o doux miracle de nos mains vides." The priest (Claude Laydu) is a nestling in a dogpatch, fine-boned like a Perugino portrait or Freddie Bartholomew not quite out of britches. ("Seminaries these days send us choirboys," grouses one veteran abbé.) The Ambricourt countryside, a barren stretch with a lavish manor full of drama obliquely registered in the cleric notebook, just a fountain pen on white paper like a blank movie screen. Spilled ink for the adulterous Count (Jean Riveyre) and his bereft wife (Rachel Bérendt), their teen daughter (Nicole Ladmiral) is a coolly vehement face floating in the darkness of the confessional booth, "une diablesse." Stale bread and sugar wine and mockery left and right, the pit of the stomach absorbs all. "This cruel ordeal may have upset my reason and my nerves. But my belief remains." Bernanos' Catholic yoke via Robert Bresson's agnostic compassion, an incomparable flow of encounters and challenges. Ruthless compression gives a world stripped down to inhospitable essentials, the lowering of the eyes or the turn of a head are enough for an epiphany, the soundscape is a trove of offscreen groans and murmurs. The pivot is a ten-minute tug-of-war for the soul of the Countess, a bravura piece of suffocation punctuated unforgettably by leaves being raked outside the window. The unsigned letter in church (Clouzot's Le Corbeau) and the vicar at the crossroads (Powell's The Spy in Black), a place of marvels. (The holy visage after a fit of delirium is a smirking schoolgirl's, a motorcycle materializes to grant the protagonist a rare smile.) Priesthood like the Foreign Legion or "a hornet in a bottle," a drift toward an enveloping crucifix and "la paix des morts." From parish to prison (A Man Escaped) is a short way, many films (I Confess, Nazarin, Winter Light, Blaise Pascal) keep Bresson's torch burning. Cinematography by Léonce-Henri Burel. With Adrien Borel, Antoine Balpetré, Nicole Maurey, and Martine Lemaire. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |