Le Dialogue des Carmélites (1960)
Directed by Philippe Agostini, Raymond Leopold Bruckberger

Film Review

After pursuing a long and successful career as a cinematographer, lending his talents to such highly esteemed works as Julien Duvivier's Un carnet de bal (1937) and Claude Autant-Lara's Douce (1943), Philippe Agostini began directing his own films in the 1950s, with limited success.  His feature debut Le Naïf aux quarante enfants (1958) isn't much to write home about and the less said about his lame thriller Rencontres (1962) the better, but between these he made a film which has stood the test of time and deserves to be more widely known than it presently is - Le Dialogue des carmélites.  Agostini scripted and directed the film in collaboration with Raymond Léopold Bruckberger, a Dominican priest who had previously had some input into Robert Bresson's similar convent-based drama Les Anges du péché, on which, incidentally, Agostini had been the cinematographer.

Le Dialogue des carmélites is taken from a 1948 stage play of the same title written by Georges Bernanos, which was itself adapted from a well-known novel of 1931, Gertrud von Le Fort's La Dernière à l'échafaud.  Bernanos died shortly after completing his play, which was first staged in 1952 by Marcelle Tassencourt, and the next year was turned into an opera by Francis Poulenc.  Bernanos's original dialogue is mostly retained in Agostini's film, which, as a result, feels more than vaguely redolent of a Robert Bresson film of this era, particularly as it deals with the theme that is central to Bresson's oeuvre: the ambiguous nature of faith.  Unlike Bresson, Agostini opts for a more conventional style of film, with a cast comprising some of the best-known French actors of the time - Pierre Brasseur, Jeanne Moreau, Madeleine Renaud, Alida Valli and Georges Wilson. There is even a cameo appearance from Jean-Louis Barrault, replaying his legendary mime act from Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du paradis (1945), with a black comic twist.

Despite its starry cast and needlessly showy production values, Le Dialogue des carmélites more than does justice to Georges Bernanos's play and provides a thoughtful and emotionally involving reflection on the power and limits of faith.  The stark juxtaposition of the French Revolution in its bloodiest phase and the serenity of life in a Carmelite convent brings into stark relief the noblest and most terrible aspects of human nature, and the film continues to have an extraordinary resonance, even in a world as faithless and directionless as the one we now appear to inhabit.  The final sequence depicting the Carmelites' brutal martyrdom, the grimmest emblem of Robespierre's reign of terror, is one that cannot fail to stir the emotions.  The torment etched on Jeanne Moreau's face expresses everything that we feel - horror for the crime mingled with exultation in the ultimate victory of the spirit over human frailty.

Film Synopsis

May, 1789.  In Compiègne, a town in northern France, two young women enter a Carmelite convent, each determined to devote their lives to the service of Christ.  Whilst one of the two - Sister Constance - is fully prepared for the austere life that lies ahead, the other - Sister Blanche - is afflicted with doubts and suffers from a morbid fear of death.  When the aged prioress dies, Mother Mary takes her place and agrees to honour her dying wish to watch over the vulnerable Blanche.  With the arrival of the French Revolution the whole country is thrown into turmoil.  By offering a temporary refuge to Blanche's aristocrat brother the Carmelites place themselves in grave danger and are soon suspected by the authorities of harbouring anti-republican feelings.  After taking mass with a priest who is on the run from the revolutionaries, the sisters are forced to separate and leave their convent.  When then they defy these orders most of them are arrested and condemned to death.  As she watches her sisters being led to the scaffold, Blanche finally finds the courage to join them...