By Mike Wilmington Wilmington@moviecitynews.com
Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic. Leon Morin, Priest; The Double Life of Veronique
Leon Morin, Priest (Leon Morin, Pretre) (Four Stars)
France; Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961 (Criterion)
Jean-Pierre Melville is mostly known these days as a French master of film noir, neo-noir and World War 2 Resistance dramas. But Leon Morin, Priest, which won a Venice Grand Prize in 1961, shows another side of Melville: the highly polished and skilled William Wyleresque adaptor of French literary classics, like Vercors’ “La Silence de la Mer,” Cocteau’s “Les Enfants Terribles” — and here, Beatrice Beck’s “Leon Morin, Pretre.”
This movie, a thoroughly intelligent and brilliantly made picture in Melville’s best style and tradition, belongs to the last categories, and it’s not what we now expect from him. It’s about a handsome young priest, Leon, (played in his first big flush of fame, by Jean-Paul Belmondo) whose spiritual counseling becomes all the rage among the pretty young ladies of the town, who are coping with the perils of Vichy France and the Occupation. Especially taken is Barny (Emmanuelle Riva, of Hiroshima, Mon Amour), the initially unbelieving single mother. (Her daughter France is partly played by Patricia Gozzi, who became a screen art house star the next year as the little girl of Sundays and Cybele.) As Barny becomes more immersed in the priest‘s home sessions and left-wing theology, she also becomes more openly enamored of the man himself, and she veers toward spiritual/romantic crisis and poignant resolution.
Melville once heard one of his films described as Bressonian; he countered by insisting that his own 1949 Silence de la Mer came first, and that Bresson’s 1951 masterpiece Diary of a Country Priest was actually Melvillean. Certainly though, Leon Morin, Priest has to be called Melville’s “Country Priest.” And it’s different from Bresson’s, though both films share an austere black and white photographic beauty — in “Leon,” thanks to the great cinematographer Henri Decae.
If you admire Melville’s great noir thrillers Le Samourai, Bob Le Flambeur, Deuxieme Souffle, and Le Cercle Rouge, (and you should), and especially if you love his WW2 Resistance classic Army of Shadows (and you also should) you should definitely see “Leon” — very dissimilar, yet a crucial link to Melville’s psyche and his feelings about the great pivotal events of his pre-movie life, in the war and the Resistance. Also, Belmondo and Riva, paradoxically, give two of their all-time sexiest performances here, which shows just how erotic repression can often be. (In French, with English subtitles.)
The Double Life of Veronique (Blu-ray) (Four Stars)
France-Poland; Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991 (Criterion)
The radiant French actress Irene Jacob plays two Veroniques, one a French music student, one (Weronika) a Polish soprano, two girls whose lives run on parallel tracks, and whose paths briefly cross, in what becomes a tragic recognition. Polish master Krzysztof Kieslowski made his first big American splash with this film, and, even if it’s not on a level with his 1988 masterpiece in ten episodes, The Decalogue — one of the greatest films ever made — Veronique is still a powerful, moving, visually striking work. I still like it, though I didn’t agree with the then-prevalent opinion that Kieslowski was the new Ingmar Bergman (nor with the backlash against him afterwards).
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The fascinating thing about Kieslowski’s late French work — to some extent the art of a man in self-imposed exile — is that he directed major French art films without being able to speak the language, more proof that film is largely a visual art. The script was co-written by Kieslowski’s usual collaborator Krzysztof Piesiewicz, and, as usual, the music is by Zbigniew Preisner, and the cinematography by Slawomir Idziak. The cast includes Wladyslaw Kowalski (as Weronika‘s father) and Claude Duneton (as Veronique’s). (In Polish and French, with English subtitles.)
Extras: Three short documentaries by Kieslowski: Factory (1970), Hospital (1976) and Railway Station (1980) (All Three Stars); Commentary by critic/historian Annette Insdorf; The Musicians (Kazimierz Karabasz, 1958) Three Stars, a short film by KK’s teacher; Documentaries; Video interviews with Jacob, Preisner and Idziak; Booklet with a Jonathan Romney essay and an excerpt from the book “Kieslowski on Kieslowki.”
