The significance of the film "Diary of a Country Priest" in the history of film is that it provides a unique example for the film adaptation of literary works.
The original diary of the French writer Bernanos (1888～1948) of the same name described the struggle between religious spirit and moral degeneration in a stern tone, portraying the image of Jesus Christ as a martyr who endured humiliation and self-sacrifice, and showed loyalty to the priesthood. The tribulations and worries of the village priests reveal their inner struggles, doubts about the mission of life, and the instinct of love. This is a religious novel that explores the soul and expresses the human heart. It is the keynote of this work that praises the spiritual value of human beings.
Bresson, the "geek in cinema", has pioneered a unique way, and "truthfully" reproduces this "first-class psychic drama" on the screen.
The usual way for a literary work to become a screen image is to hunt plots, characters and distinctive external action materials from the original work to form a "visual" film with a new balance of drama. However, Bresson's concept is: "The reality of an excellent literary work is the work itself, and the description of a literary work cannot be separated from the words." He is determined to grasp the main body and be faithful to the original. Therefore, he claimed that his unique adaptation strategy is: only deletes, never adds; respects the original text and emphasizes the literary nature. This is a "faithful" adaptation that is very different from the "freedom" adaptation. As French film critic André Bazin said, “This is not about freely extracting material with deep respect in order to shoot a film that stands by the original; it is based on the original novel and constructing a film through the form of a film. A secondary work. This is not a film that is'comparable' or'comparative' with a novel; it is a new aesthetic entity, as if it is a novel expanded by a movie."
In order to realize the established narrative strategy, Bresson makes full use of voice-over as the main method of retelling the original text of the novel. The voiceover in the film is not an explanation of the event or an inner monologue, but a retelling of the original text; it is not the protagonist’s recollection of the past, but a fragment of the diary read in a neutral tone. Thus, the original words in the novel are retained, just like a complete marble from a quarry. In order to be faithful to the original work, Bresson did not rewrite the conversations recorded by the priest through memories into dialogues to suit the needs of the performance, and tried his best to obliterate the true rhythm and balance of dialogue that happened to be in the original text of the novel, so that it was buried in the deliberate pursuit of calm and steady speech. In order to create a sense of transcendence. The deliberate pursuit of literacy is particularly reflected in the editor’s tendency to select materials: Bresson could abandon the literary descriptions and choose the vivid, textured, specific, and distinctive visual materials that are everywhere in the original works. However, He did the opposite, deliberately taking the completely opposite approach, "Compared with novels, films are more'literary,' but novels are full of specific images." (Bazin)
Through the film's seemingly faithful adaptation strategy of the original, we can see Bresson's deep thinking and true intentions: great spiritual drama is not manifested through external actions but through soul activities, and soul communication is the core of the film. Therefore, the film regards the movement of inner life as the only real and only sensible movement. If the traditional method of adaptation is adopted, the film may only reflect the awkward situation of the rural priests, the ordinary routines and the suffering of illness, fictional a story of joys and sorrows, or become a sociological perspective; with the help of and highlighting the sentences of the original novel, But you can listen to the sounds deep in the soul, and maintain the unity of the artistic effect through the voice-over throughout.
However, "Bresson's loyalty to the original work is, after all, just a borrowing of free treatment, and the chains are nothing more than the decoration of freedom" (Bazin). Bresson claimed to respect the original literature, because it is more beneficial to him than unreasonable deletion, because respect for the original text is not only a cozy constraint, but also a dialectical factor in creating a style. Bresson achieved a unique artistic effect by confining the original text and trying to mobilize several film elements.
The film does not require actors to perform a line, or even to experience it, but only requires the script to be written. This kind of treatment not only runs counter to the actor's theatrical performance characteristics, but also contradicts various psychological expressions. For example, Shandar’s shots in the confessional only use the flickering of light and shadow to present the heroine’s hazy face. The usual performance is not seen. The facial expressions are sublimated into symbols. What the audience sees is not the actor’s face’s instant reaction to the situation, but the existence. Normality is a cohesive form of pain caused by inner conflict.
While compressing the psychological performance and drama, Bresson dialectically dealt with two types of pure reality: one, the face of an actor in the natural environment where no one dealt with traces and the reality of daily life; the second, the original text reality. Obviously, the two-dimensional reality of the original text and the real object directly captured by the camera cannot be combined, extended, and integrated into one another; the juxtaposition of these two realities instead highlights their essential differences. The two constitute an equal relationship, each with its own means, materials and styles. It is through this separation of different elements that Bresson eliminates non-essential factors and uses ontological inconsistency to highlight the only common measure of the two—soul.
Out of artistic needs, moving lenses are completely absent in the film. Bresson rejected this film element that allows the audience to approach the subject, identify with the characters, and become active participants in the event, so that the audience can think calmly without being confused by cheap sadness.
Bresson broke the rule that video and sound should never be overlapped. The separation of sound and picture, or the parallel of sound and picture, is the extension of Bresson's dialectics of abstraction and authenticity. He believes that with the parallel of sound and picture, one can finally feel the truth of the soul. The most moving moment of this film is precisely the paragraph where the language and the picture describe the same thing. In the film, "the expression of sound is not used to fill in the event represented by the image, it is the rendering and expansion of the event, just like the vibrato of a violin intensified by the resonance box of a violin." (Bazin) It is probably futile to find the principle of stunning beauty only from the visible content of the image. The aesthetic uniqueness of this film lies in the fact that starting from the image, corresponding to the sound, the relationship between the image and the sentence gradually develops, until the text finally becomes more prominent than the image. At the end of the film, the image disappeared from the screen, and a black cross appeared on the white screen—the only visible language symbol left on the screen. Andre Bazin cheered excitedly for this: "We have experienced a wonderful pure film masterpiece through this indisputable example of aesthetics... Here, the empty, without the picture, completely give way to The literary screen marks the victory of film realism... With the advent of the "Country Priest's Diary", film adaptation has entered a new stage!" French film theorist Lepierre said, this is "movie and literature from thought to The first film that exhibits unique artistry in equal form".
After all, this film has new discoveries about the art of film adaptation. However, the esoteric structure, austere style, non-passionate performances, and continuous voice-overs are difficult to resonate with the broad audience, but rather to retain the essence of the original text. The strategy of abandoning the visual image may not be able to realize the author's original aesthetic intention. For example, the ill priest saw the hallucinations of the holy infant before he lost consciousness. It was only explained by the voice-over. The image only showed the external form of him staggering forward. This kind of treatment is really difficult to show the protagonist’s complex inner activities, so , It is difficult to touch his soul. Perhaps, when Bresson was persistently pursuing literary quality, he neglected the multimedia nature of movies: there are images, words, and music. Bresson-a lonely explorer!
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