Léon Morin, Priest


Léon Morin, Priest is a 1961 film directed and scripted by Jean-Pierre Melville, and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva. Belmondo was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor. It is based on the 1952 Prix Goncourt-winning novel The Passionate Heart by Béatrix Beck.

Plot

In a town in the French Alps during the Occupation of France, Barny is a young, wayward, sexually frustrated widow, living with her little girl. A communist militant and the lapsed-Catholic widow of a Jewish husband, she one day enters a church and randomly chooses a priest to confess to and, while in confessional, attempts to provoke him by criticizing Catholicism. Instead of being affronted, the priest engages her in an intellectual discussion regarding religion. The priest is Leon Morin, young, handsome, smart and altruistic. He invites Barny to continue the conversation outside of confessional. She begins regularly seeing him and is impressed by his moral strength, while he makes it his mission to steer her onto the right path.

Cast

added the film to his Great Movies list in 2009.

Home video

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in July 2011.