012 - Leon Morin, Priest, 1961, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

012 - Leon Morin, Priest, 1961, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

This movie is special.

It is about an atheist woman in an intellectual relationship with a Catholic priest.

She goes to Mass to play a joke on him.  He asks for her confession and she states, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."

He does not flinch.

He engages her, and they begin a dialectical conversation that will last for years.

He respects her, values her, challenges her.

She falls in love with him.

He does not flinch.

The War ends.  Their lives change.    Her life changes.

Does she convert?

Watch and see.

Jean-Pierre Melville was the great French director just before the generation of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave).  He was known for gritty crime dramas, but he also made films about the French resistance during World War 2.  He had lived it.

Jean-Paul Belmondo, who plays the priest, was a hot movie star and the last person the public would have expected to play the role of the chaste intellectual priest.  It was on his shoulders that the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) had come into existence, with Jean-Luc Godard's explosive movie Breathless.  He was the bad boy.

But he is an actor, and like all great actors, he enjoyed playing different parts, exploring different personalities, becoming different people.  He loved the challenge of transforming himself for this role.

Emmanuelle Riva had burst on the scene in Hiroshima Mon Amour, a French film made in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bomb.  In that film she played a French actress falling in love with a Japanese man.  Juicy.  The good news is we will be watching it later this year.

In this movie she plays the role with which you may find parallels in Anne Bancroft in 84 Charing Cross Road--the smart woman, a widow with a young daughter, working through what is important to her in a long-term conversation, debate, correspondence with a man.  Leon Morin and Barny (her character name) develop a great friendship, and it outlasts the war and their own personal challenges.

What makes this movie special are the players, the script, and the overarching presence of the German occupation during World War 2.

Earlier I referred to Revanche as a film for adults, not only in its graphic portrayal of the subject matter, but also in its exploration of the matters of the soul.

Leon Morin, Priest is also a film for adults, not only in its treatment of desire and its use of the setting, but also in its exploration of the matters of the soul.

As for desire, our lady Barny has two forbidden desires, first for a female coworker and second for the priest.  She works through them sincerely.  She introduces other women to the priest and they fall for him too, one openly trying to seduce him.  As for the setting, genocide is happening around them.  People's family members are disappearing.  When they are liberated, it is an American soldier, one of the "good guys," who attempts to violate her.  And as for the matters of the soul, questions of doubt and faith are addressed openly and without flinching.

Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, was an atheist.  Yet he respected the source material enough (Beatrix Beck's novel) to play it straight.  The result is that the film allows the subject matter room to breathe.  The characters discuss theology frankly and freely, and work through it.  The viewer can engage in the conversation and think through it as well.

Art holds up a mirror to nature.  Theology is in the deepest part of our nature.  Do we believe in God?  How do we respond to the forces of guilt and grace, sin and forgiveness, fear and love?  How do we deal with death, loneliness, carnal desire, and emotional attachment in a world of racism, genocide, and war?

The film does not answer these questions.

It tells a story.

You get to work through it.

Or simply enjoy the journey.