A true priest is never loved by anyone—only respected and obeyed.
I heard this eternal truth spoken in one of the two greatest Catholic films of all time, ‘Diary of a Country Priest (1951)’. Those whom everyone respects and obeys but does not love—it takes no more than two minutes to cast them aside. We often see how people take pleasure in spreading slander about popular and revered figures, how they seem to attain heavenly bliss if they can cause them harm, how even their deaths leave people unmoved, bringing instead a kind of triumphant feeling. Why? There is no particular reason. People simply cannot bear anyone who is respected and popular. And if such a person happens to be charitable and untroubled by worldly concerns, then harming them becomes what people consider as sacred as prayer. When humanity does not love someone, it does not hesitate to kill them; not because that person has wronged anyone, but rather the truly harmful ones remain far safer.
Let me return to the priest in the film. He delivers sermons to everyone, encourages children toward righteousness, explains the meaning of life to those in despair. His way of life is simple, straightforward, ordinary. His daily sincere devotion to duty as the father of a church in a secluded parish. He lives perpetually in a state of spiritual and physical torment that pushes him toward uncertainty at every moment. Yet he remains steadfast in his duty. His desires and actions are beautiful, sacred, beneficial—which is precisely why everyone in the village thinks he is useless, worthless, incompetent.
Due to stomach problems, he sustains himself only on bread and wine. His meager means prevent him from obtaining good quality wine. This long-standing diet eventually leads to stomach cancer. Yet people assumed he was mad, a drunkard. He was solitary, deprived of sympathy from both humanity and God, sorrowful, yet a believing Catholic. In the film we see him helping a woman find meaning in life—someone who, after receiving blow after blow from existence, has lived for many years hating God. When that woman dies sometime after their encounter, everyone assumes the priest must have said something to cause her death.
Throughout the entire film, the priest records in his diary all his suffering and the weariness of daily existence. It becomes an inevitable journey toward infinite melancholy. In the cinema we see him laugh only once—the day he leaves the village for the city to seek medical treatment. A motorcyclist gives him a ride to the station, and in that moment the spirited boy within this perpetually sorrowful priest seems to emerge! That smile is his last. That journey from the cruel village to the city of death becomes his final journey. Here Bresson walks the same path shown by Dreyer. Just as in ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)’ the truly believing, innocent soul becomes a victim of society’s cruelty through countless tragedies and sufferings, so too must this devoted follower of Catholic faith taste premature death through torment.