DIRECTOR: Jean-Pierre Melville 
PRODUCERS: Georges de Beauregard, Carlo Ponti
SCREENPLAY: Jean-Pierre Melville. Based on novel by Béatrice Beck.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Henri Decaë
EDITOR: Jacqueline Meppiel
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Daniel Guéret
COSTUME DESIGNER: Paulette Breil
MUSIC: Martial Solal

WITH: Jean-Paul Belmondo (Léon Morin), Emmanuelle Riva (Barny), Irène Tunc (Christine Sangredin), Nicole Mirel (Sabine Levy), Gisèle Grimm (Lucienne)

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REVIEW

Jean-Paul Belmondo delivers a subtly sensual performance in the hot-under-the-collar Léon Morin, Priest… The French superstar plays a devoted man of the cloth who is desired by all the women of a small village in Nazi-occupied France… A triumph of mood, setting, and innuendo, Léon Morin, Priest is an irreverent pleasure from one of French cinema’s towering virtuosos.

“Melville was one of cinema’s great modernists, a true French independent and forerunner to the New Wave. In Léon Morin, Priest, he took two actors associated with the New Wave – Jean-Paul Belmondo of Breathless and Emmanuelle Riva of Hiroshima, mon amour – and, paradoxically, created a film that has more ties to Robert Bresson than to Bob le flambeur. Casting the boyish Belmondo as a priest with a missionary bent is one of the intriguing ambiguities of this film. Riva is a Communist drawn to the cleric and, through desire, into an attempt at religious conversion. The spiritual desolation wrought by the Occupation has rarely been so sensitively delineated as in this portrait of a town suddenly exposed to its underlying social disarray. The vigor of Melville’s filmmaking, from crane shots and quick pans to caressing close-ups of obscure objects of desire, gives this contemplative film a thrilling beauty.”

— Judy Bloch, Pacific Film Archive

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FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Nelson     
Tuesday 11 August, 6.00pm

Auckland     
Monday 7 September, 6.00pm (suspended)
 
Wellington     
Monday 14 September, 6.15pm

Hamilton     
Monday 12 October, 8.00pm

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Find more FRENCH CONNECTIONS >>

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French Cinema presented with the cooperation of the Embassy of France and Institut Français

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