Léon Morin Priest

Léon Morin Priest (1961) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva, Irène Tunc

***

By Alan Bacchus

While the French New Wavers were running around Paris with their handheld cameras reinventing cinema, fellow French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville continued to make his classical Hollywood-influenced Euro-cool crime pictures, including films like Bob Le Flambour, Le Samurai and Le Deuxieme Souffle. Sandwiched into these stylish films is a remarkably gentle and quiet picture, Léon Morin Priest, featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo as a handsome priest who has a profound effect on a cynical widow in Nazi-occupied France.

Barny (Emmanuel Riva) is a recently widowed mother to a young daughter living like many of her girlfriends – scared witless for her family’s future in her Nazi-occupied village. With Jews being extricated from the village and her being half-Jewish, Barny needs to find a new identity. For women like her, the only option is conversion to the Catholic Church.

Walking into the Church she confesses for the first time at random to Léon Morin (Belmondo), a deeply thoughtful and impossibly handsome priest. As an atheist, Barny initially intends only to fake her way through the conversion process for the sake of her and her daughter. But given the combination of Jean-Pierre’s persuasiveness and attractiveness, Barny gradually becomes a true convert and by the end she is completely devoted to God.

The film begins and ends with a naughty and sexual tease of then New Wave heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo as a man-in-frock. Belmondo’s rugged and untraditionally handsome face, even with these heterosexual eyes, is the stuff of dreamy Hollywood. Imagine bad boy Steve McQueen wearing a frock and a reverse collar?

This is not The Thorn Birds though. Melville’s screenplay (based on Beatrix Beck’s novel) is one of the most devout and intellectually rigorous films about religion I’ve ever seen. The near two-hour running time is filled with numerous lengthy dialogue scenes between Barny and Morin discussing the contradictions and attractions of Christianity. At times overly intellectual and at other times spiritually stimulating, the film doesn’t quite hold us through its excessive 117-minute running time.

At the very least, this film is something to be cherished for its place in the filmography of one of France’s best filmmakers. It’s an elegant and heartfelt transition to something personal to Melville. The theme of the French resistance also connects well to Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969), as they are two films about the passionate fight for freedom. One is about guns and bloodshed, and the other, in this case, is about a spiritual awakening and liberation of the soul.

Léon Morin Priest is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.

ARMY OF SHADOWS

Army of Shadows (1969) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville
Starring: Lino Ventura, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret

****

Kyle Smith of the New York Post was quoted as saying Robert De Niro’s film “The Good Shepherd” was “the ‘Godfather’ of spy films”. That’s a horrible comparison, but saying “Army of Shadows” is the “Godfather” of Résistance films – or even ‘spy’ films as a whole – is not an overstatement. Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic was rediscovered and reissued last year and has arrived on a beautiful Criterion Collection DVD special edition. It’s an epic story of a group of ordinary French citizens and their courageous but dangerous and difficult efforts to front the Résistance efforts against Nazi occupation in WWII.

The opening shot is a magnificent long static take. The Arc de Triumphe framed perfectly at the end of the Champs Elysee. When a group of Nazi soldiers goosestep their way into frame from the background to the foreground we are mediately put in the time and place. It’s 1942 – Nazi occupied France. One of the leaders of the French Résistance, Philip Gerbier (Lino Ventura) has been captured and taken into interrogation. His escape is expertly engineered and executed like a trained killer would. He’s not a fighter though, but a civil engineer, forced into participating in the dangerous game of hiding and subverting the Nazis from within. Immediately we get the sense the 3 years of occupation has hardened Philippe. He’s not the same man before the war. But now, he’s a tough-minded, steely-eyed idealistic soldier.

The film focuses on a group of six Résistance leaders who are equally as determined to make the sacrifices needed to free France. But with the Nazi’s hot on their tail, this tests the resolve of each of members of the group.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s confidence with the story and the medium is apparent. Made in 1969, it’s one of Melville’s later films and a labour of love. Melville was known for his American-style French crime films – “Le Samourai”, “Le Circle Rouge”, and “Bob Le Flambeur”. Those films were genre-based and always had a cinematic panache to them. Melville takes “Army of Shadows” very seriously. The mood and tone is cold and isolated. There’s a blanket of despair consistent throughout, visualized by the desolate streets, the clean compositions, grey and colourless visual design and the cold and detached performances of the actors.

But when the film shifts briefly to London we immediately feel a different mood. The group makes a daring trip via submarine to London to get support from the British government. Philippe gazes around at the lively activity of the city. He walks into a bar and looks forlornly on the playful interaction of males and females. He’s reminded of the life he used to have as a pre-war citizen. The hustle and bustle of the city is palpable and contrasts the quiet subdued air of occupied France.

Eventually the group returns to France when one of their leaders is captured by the Nazis. Here on in a series of events tests the soldiers’ allegiance to their cause. No one is immune the pressure of torture and persecution. Everyone has their weak spot – including Mathilde.

The Criterion transfer of the film is magnificent. That combined with the classical cinematography and expert direction makes "Army of Shadows" one of the great films of the era. The themes of honour, guilt, and betrayal hold true to today as well. The film is closest in comparison to Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” (1971), both are great films about characters whose loyalties to their friends and countrymen are tested amid tumultuous times of war and subjugation.

Buy it here: Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection