(1961) “Religion is the opiate of the people,” begins the confession of Communist widow Emmanuelle Riva (Hiroshima, mon amour), provocative just to get some fun in the drab little village where she‘s been relocated during the Occupation. But when her confessor dryly replies “Pas exactement,” she begins a seemingly inexorable turn towards God — or is towards her handsome confessor, Père Jean-Paul Belmondo (in “an erotically charged performance” – BFI)? Fed up with being “an auteur maudit known only to a handful of crazy film buffs,” Jewish atheist Jean-Pierre Melville accepted an offer of real stars and an actual budget to adapt Beatrix Beck’s autobiographical novel, a book he already considered “the most accurate picture I have read of life under the Occupation,” then had to talk an initially reluctant Belmondo — hot from his star-making role in Breathless (in which Melville cameoed) — into taking the title role. Melville created a kind of fresco of the Occupation — play-it-safe baptisms of Communist and Jewish children; awakenings in the night by the sounds of shooting; parades of Alpine-hatted Italian Bersaglieri and marching band Nazis; arguments with pro-Petain and anti-Semitic co-workers; a Jewish colleague getting a shave, name change, and a ticket out; platonic same-sex crushes in a man-less world — but its center is Riva’s confusing, fascinating, tantalizing encounter with God and his servant Belmondo (successfully intellectual, sincere, and ultimately enigmatic in a definitely change-of-pace role), their mutual underplaying making even theological discussions subtly throbbing with emotional undertones. Shot by the great Henri Decaë (The 400 Blows, Elevator to the Gallows, Bob Le Flambeur). b&w; Approx. 116 minutes
1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10:00
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

“Melville’s extraordinary excursion into Bressonian territory... With an extreme emotional intensity,
he forges links between the disparate themes of the Occupation, profane love, and spiritual quest.”
– Time Out (London)

“Melville’s casting of Belmondo was a piece of counterintuitive genius; having established himself as a supremely ironical performer
in Godard’s Breathless, here he is asked to portray a paragon of sincerity. It’s a remarkable performance.”
– Glenn Kenny

“Expresses the genuine eye of the visionary…
Apart from Bresson, it is hard to think of anyone else now who can give the physical world such a charge.”
– Penelope Gilliatt, The Observer

“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.”
– Pacific Film Archive

“A mid 20th-century masterpiece reminiscent of the best work of Dreyer, Bresson, Fassbinder, and, latest addition to the pantheon, Lars Von Trier.”
– Bright Lights Film Journal
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