Death of Jean

In the darkness of a country road at night, a weak light approaches: it is Barny, a young woman who, by bicycle, joins the small town where she lives. It’s Barny, whose Jewish husband was killed, and who is raising her 8-year-old daughter alone under the Occupation, Italian then German. This historical context is rendered with great realism: small streets and modest houses, simple interiors that the stove struggles to heat, an office where the almost exclusively female staff observes and, on occasion, clashes over political choices. The fathers of families “have taken to the maquis” and the Jewish families are hiding while waiting to be able to take shelter. A young man remains: Léon Morin, the priest.

The director was interested, as soon as it was released in 1952, in the homonymous novel by Béatrice Beck, but he waited to find an actor capable of embodying this priest character to make a film of it. The choice of Belmondo will finally impose itself on him. And the actor will resume with convincing accuracy the chiseled dialogues of the novel.

“I’m on fire. I convert. I am at your command”

Barny, a communist activist, has decided, for fun, to challenge him: she goes to the confessional and states point-blank: “Religion is the opium of the people”. Abbé Morin, unabashed, strikes up a conversation: ” not exactly. It is the bourgeois… They have distorted it for their own profit.… The Church has lost the working class, it is true but we are reacting”. Barny, destabilized by the responsiveness of the priest, prepares to beat a retreat, but Morin skillfully questions her about her life, and finally gives her absolution.

From then on the viewer understood that it is this priest brilliantly exercising his ministry who plays the leading role. He will receive Barny regularly, lend her books, see her at home. Barny takes a liking to these exchanges and, suddenly, one day announces: “I’m on fire. I convert. I am at your command”. Morin, suspicious, begins by ironizing (“you will poison your existence… ruin your life”) but it’s serious, now Barny prays and takes communion. She even suggests to her colleagues at the office to take advice from the abbot.

A priest perfectly suited to his mission

Belmondo gives the figure of the priest an impressive aura: free and dynamic in appearance, he has a natural authority over his penitents made up of calm assurance and simplicity. He thus thwarts the successive traps set for him by Barny because he is sure of his faith and perfectly adjusted to his mission. Faced with the last trap, the most formidable, his reaction will be all the more violent as he will feel more fragile. The only solution will be to cut to the quick.

When the Liberation arrived, the provisional office where Barny worked closed and Abbé Morin was appointed elsewhere. The farewell scene leaves no doubt about the feelings experienced by both of them: Barny staggers as he walks away while Morin remains frozen standing on the threshold of the presbytery. One last time it was the abbot who decided, and Barny felt that he was firm in his resolve: “Yes, we will see each other again. Not in this world… In the next! ». Only time will tell if the little light that opened the film will continue to shine.…

Michele Debidour is a graduate in theology and cinema, and chaired the ecumenical jury of Cannes. It introduces us to the spiritual message of a great film available on DVD and VOD and offers us through the seventh art a beautiful support to meditate on the condition of man and transcendence.

This article is taken from the monthly Pray.