This June, help us celebrate the French Film Festival 2025 in style with a singular work from one of France’s greatest filmmakers — Robert Bresson’s DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST.
Bresson, the French auteur known as the ‘high priest of cinema’, was revered for his resolutely minimalist rules for filmmaking, including using actors as ‘models’, and maintaining a number of restrictions to emphasise the purity and truth of the cinematic image, such as a lack of music. The director of masterpieces such as PICKPOCKET, A MAN ESCAPED and AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, his presence looms over French cinema, to the degree that Jean-Luc Godard once wrote of him: "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music."
DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST is one of Bresson’s most financially successful films. The story of a sickly young priest who is devoured by a scandal in the small-town where he has been sent to be a part of the clergy, the film utilises non- and first-time actors including Claude Laydu, the acclaimed Swiss actor who makes his debut here in the starring role. A profound and scorching inquiry into the limits of faith, it has admirers in a number of the greatest of filmmakers. Andrei Tarkovsky named it his favourite film; Martin Scorsese listed it as one of the ten greatest films ever made; Paul Schrader called it a major influence on his own FIRST REFORMED; Japanese auteur Hong Sang-soo said the film inspired him to become a filmmaker. Many have commented on the film’s profound exploration of faith, with Roger Ebert listing it alongside Carl Theodor Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC as the greatest of Catholic films.
Said Ebert: ‘Robert Bresson does nothing in a superficial way to please his audiences. The rewards of his films unfold slowly from their stories, and pierce deeply. He is very serious about human nature and the indifference of the world. He is not a Catholic but an agnostic who values any consolation his characters can find, in or out of faith. His visual strategy doesn’t break scenes down into easy storytelling elements but regards them as unyielding facts… for the last hour I was more spellbound than during a thriller. Bresson does nothing to make me “like” the priest, but my empathy was urgently involved.’
Don’t miss your chance to catch this masterpiece of French cinema. 8.45pm, on Tuesday (as opposed to our regular date of Wednesday!) 24th of June at the Capitol Cinema. Tickets just $13. See you there!
More info on the French Film Festival here:
https://www.thecapitol.co.nz/french-film-festival-aotearoa-2025
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