Robert Bresson

Diary of a Country Priest

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.

Film Info

  • 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

Purchase Options

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
Diary of a Country Priest
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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Robert Bresson

Writer, Director

Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson

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.