Diary of a Country Priest

A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.

France
1951
115 minutes
Black & White
1.33:1
French
Spine #222

Special Features

Audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie
New and improved English subtitle translation
New essay by film critic Frédéric Bonnaud

New cover by Michael Boland

DVD 1 Disc Out Of Print SRP: $39.95

Special Features

Audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie
New and improved English subtitle translation
New essay by film critic Frédéric Bonnaud

New cover by Michael Boland

Cast & Credits

Cast

Claude Laydu: Priest of Ambricourt
Jean Riveyre: Count
Marie-Monique Arkell: Countess
André Guibert: Priest of Torcy
Antoine Balpêtré: Dr. Delbende
Nicole Ladmiral: Chantal
Martine Lemaire: Séraphita
Nicole Maurey: Louise
Jean Danet: Olivier
Gaston Séverin: Canon
Bernard Hubrenne: Priest Dufréty
Jeanne Étiévant: Housekeeper
Gilberte Terbois: Madame Dumouchel
Léon Arvel: Monsieur Fabragars
Martial Morange: Deputy mayor

Credits

Director: Robert Bresson
Producers: Léon Carré
Producers: Robert Sussfeld
Screenplay: Robert Bresson
Based on the novel by: Georges Bernanos
Original music by: Jean-Jacques Grünenwald
Cinematography: Léonce-Henri Burel
Film editor: Paulette Robert
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Set decorator: Robert Turlure
Assistant director: Guy Lefranc
Sound: Jean Rieul

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Explore

Robert Bresson

Writer, Director

A singular, iconoclastic artist and philosopher, Robert Bresson illuminates the history of cinema with a spiritual yet socially incisive body of work. Famously dubbed a “transcendental” filmmaker (along with Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer) by Paul Schrader, Bresson is notable for continually refining the strict precision of his style—abolishing psychology, professional actors, and ornate camera work, and instead concentrating on the rigid movements of his “models” (as he called his actors) and the anguished solitude of his martyred characters. While the alternately tender and brutal allegory Au hasard Balthazar is widely considered Bresson’s masterpiece, he had a long, visionary career that began in the forties and ended in the eighties, and was full of consistently fine films—the period drama Les dames du bois de Boulogne, the ascetic character study Diary of a Country Priest, and the minimalist tragedies Pickpocket and Mouchette among them.