restoral of the ordinary
by
Douglas Messerli
Béatrix
Beck and Jean-Pierre Melville (screenplay, based on Beck’s novel). Jean-Pierre
Melville (director) Léon Morin, Prêtre (Léon Morin, Priest) / 1961
Quite
by accident, immediately after seeing Fontaine’s The Innocents, which I review above, Netflix sent me Jean-Pierre
Melville’s 1961 film about the French occupation in World War II and a struggle
for faith, Léon Morin, Prêtre, a
movie which I had long before entered into my queue, and had never before seen.
Although many of the very same issues
about faith are raised in this film—for example, the priest Morin (Jean-Paul
Belmondo) argues, reminding us of Maria in the Fontaine film that, “If there
were proof [of God], everyone would believe. We’d understand. We’d know. We’d
see this world would no longer be the world below, but heaven.”—the context
here is quite different. Indeed, the small French village in which the widowed
Barny (Emmanuelle Riva) finds herself, is also isolated, with both Italian and
German soldiers forcing their way upon them, this woman, whose husband was
evidently Jewish, is without faith, but yet when the Germans arrive deems it
preferable—as do several other village women—to baptize her child.
Melville reiterates the irony of the
situation as, after the ceremony, we see several of the male attendees rushing
back to their mountain hideouts, obviously Resistance soldiers who have come
down from the mountain to see their own children “inoculated” from German
suspicion. Just to be safer, moreover, Barny sends her daughter off to live
with two elderly spinsters in the country.
Yet Melville does not dwell on the
dangers of occupation. Rather, he subtly reveals them in more subtle ways, such
as the moment we witness Barny peering a show window, while behind her the
Germans can be seen arresting citizens. The Italians, with their plumed
helmets, are merely a small intrusion, but when the Germans come marching in,
we sense a change in the entire place.
The film, however, is not so much about the occupation (although, as The New York Times reviewer Manohla
Dargis notes, the world Barny inhabits “is one of profound disarray —
fractured, unstable, uncertain”) but about how one might live a stable and
meaningful life despite the War.
Against this fragile world, Barny does
appear to be a healthy survivor. She is not in the slightest embarrassed to
later express the fact that she adores one of her female supervisors, Sabine
(Nicole Mirel), and ponders a potentially lesbian relationship that Melville
depicts through a scene in which Sabine leans over Barny at her office desk,
with her breasts encompassing the other woman’s head. Barny, herself, gushes,
“She’s like an Amazon.”
Her daughter’s baptism and the girl’s church
studies, however, soon lead her to the town’s cathedral, if no other reason
than to confess her hypocrisy. Fearing an older stern priest, she picks out her
would-be confessor by his working-class name. What a wonder that she discovers
in the confessional not only a handsome man, but a person willing to accept her
lack of faith and to begin a conversation with her in his room at nights. The
first time they meet, Melville’s camera, reminding one a bit the cinematography
of Robert Bresson, literally undresses the young priest by panning down his
robe button by button! What follows, over several weeks, are intense meetings,
where they do little but discuss the books he offers her to read, but in which
the director’s camera, through the flickers of their eyes, the brushing
together of their hands, and numerous other gentle insinuations, we observe
them struggling to against carnal love.
Morin, for his part, remains ever open
and honest, admitting, for example, that “God is an experimental and entirely
incommunicable being.” When Barny complains of her reading, he responds: “The
workings of God do not make a satisfactory ladder to God.”
Not so very amazingly, perhaps, Barny
finally converts, insisting she has become committed to the Church. Even Morin doubts
her convictions. Melville was quoted as saying “she converts in order that they
can have sex.” Of course, they never do have sex, even though by the time Barny
has found religion, several of her woman friends have begun to seek out the
priest for personal studies as well.
None of these is of interest to the
director or us because, in a sense, in Barny’s conversion, Morin has already
consummated their relationship—spiritually at least. And in that consummation
the woman has been able to come to terms simultaneously with herself and her
god. The War ends, and her child returns from her country stay. As in
Fontaine’s film, the ordinary has been restored.
Los Angeles, July
24, 2016
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