The locals gossip that he's a drunk, because of his diet, but we never see him drunk. Girls in catechism class play tricks on him. His church and the manor of the local count are closed off behind bars, as if gated against each other. There is often no sign of life except for the distant, unfriendly barking of dogs. The landscape around his little church is barren. He is thin and weak, he coughs up blood, he grows faint in the houses of parishioners, one late night he falls in the mud and cannot get up. Whether this is because his stomach won't hold down anything else or whether his diet is destroying his health is unclear until later. He lives only on bread, wine and a little potato soup. This film is the story of a man who seems in the process of offering himself to God as a sacrifice. He keeps a daily journal in which he records his actions, which seem futile to him. He is unwilling or unable to defend himself. His faith and vocation are real to him, but the parishioners in Ambricourt scorn and insult him, and tell lies about him. He looks solemn, withdrawn, stunned by the enormity of his job. For the rest of the time in Robert Bresson's "The Diary of a Country Priest" (1951), the young man's face scarcely betrays an emotion.
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