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RIALTO PICTURES PRESSBOOK

DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST 

- RIALTO PICTURES - 

Writer/Director 

Robert Bresson 

from the novel Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne by 

Georges Bernanos 

Producer 

Léon Carré 

Cinematography 

Léonce-Henri Burel 

Camera Operator 

Robert Juillard 

Assistant Director 

Guy Lefranc 

Editor 

Paulette Robert 

Music 

Jean-Jacques Grunenwald 

Sound 

Jean Rieul 

English translation/subtitles (2011) 

Lenny Borger 

Subtitle Editors (2011) 

Bruce Goldstein 

Adrienne Halpern 

A Union Générale Cinématographique Production 

A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE 

Shooting: March 6–June 19, 1950 

Pas-de-Calais (France) 

First Release: February 7, 1951 (Paris) 

France Black and White Aspect ratio: 1.33:1 

Running time: 115 min. 

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CAST 

The Priest of Ambricourt 

Claude Laydu 

The Count 

Jean Riveyre 

The Countess 

Marie-Monique Arkell 

The Priest of Torcy 

André Guibert 

Doctor Delbende 

Antoine Balpetré 

Chantal 

Nicole Ladmiral 

Seraphita 

Martine Lemaire 

Louise 

Nicole Maurey 

The Canon 

Gaston Séverin 

Olivier 

Jean Danet 

Louis Dufréty 

Bernard Hubrenne 

Housekeeper 

Jeanne Etiévant 

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WHAT THE CRITICS HAVE SAID ABOUT 


"A pure and intense account of the anguish of a young priest whose faith is neither 

understood nor accepted by his village. An austere director of astonishing integrity, 

Bresson offers no sops to the public -- no humorous or romantic asides; he pulls 

you down into the depths of the priest's suffering and refuses to give you a glad 

hand up. What he does offer is one of the most profound emotional 

experiences in the history of film; no other director, with the possible exception 

of Dreyer with The Passion of Joan of Arc, has come so close to communicating a 

religious experience." – Pauline Kael 

“Bresson at his greatest... [builds] a profound sense of a higher order through its 

relentless detailing of the cold, small facts of everyday life. A masterpiece, 

beyond question.” – Dave Kehr 

“Watching this spiritual odyssey is almost a religious experience in itself, but 

one which has nothing to do with faith or dogma, everything to do with Bresson’s 

unique ability to exteriorize an interior world.” – Time Out (London) 

“This one movie changed my life... by putting me in contact with a habit of mind 

that I may as well call spiritual, and a mental process suspiciously like meditation.” 

– Philip Lopate 

"A masterpiece with an almost physical impact...It moves the critic and the 

uncritical alike primarily because of its power to stir the emotions at their highest 

level of sensitivity." – André Bazin 

"Bresson’s best film. Every shot is as true as a handful of earth." 

– François Truffaut 

Awards 

Prix Louis Delluc (Best French Film) 

Grand Prix du Cinéma Français 1 

International Award, Venice Film Festival 2 

Best Cinematography, Venice Film Festival 

International Catholic Film Office Award, Venice Film Festival 

Italian Film Critics Award, Venice Film Festival 

French Film Critics Award (Prix Méliès) 

1 At the time, this was France’s equivalent to the Best Picture Oscar. The award, last given in 

1984, was subsequently replaced in importance by the César. 

2 It was also nominated for the Golden Lion. 

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SYNOPSIS 

A young but sickly priest, fresh out of the seminary, arrives in Ambricourt, a 

modest village in a gloomy corner of northwestern France, to take charge of his 

first parish. The parish is poor, the rectory devoid of the most basic amenities. The 

parishioners are at best indifferent or suspicious. These include the local peasants 

and the nobility who live at the Chateau: the Count, the Countess, their daughter 

Chantal, and the governess, Miss Louise. 

It doesn’t take long for the young priest to realize that the locals have little 

sympathy for him and even less spiritual feeling. Though he thinks he’s found an 

ally in the Count, his illusions are quickly crushed. He’s distressed when a miserly 

old peasant comes to quibble bitterly over the price of his wife’s funeral. And in 

catechism class, even the most studious of the young girls, Seraphita, seems 

interested only in making fun of him. His only support is his older colleague, the 

parish priest of Torcy, a gruff but warm-hearted cleric. 

Through Miss Louise, the governess at the Chateau, who regularly attends church, 

the priest learns about the Count’s family. Since the death of a first child, the 

Countess has lived in reclusive sorrow. Her daughter Chantal is a proud young 

woman who seems to take pleasure in humiliating Miss Louise. The priest soon 

understands that the Chateau is full of secrets. The Countess has lost her faith and 

seems to hold God personally responsible for her misfortune. And if Chantal 

thrives on hatred, it’s because she knows that the governess has become her 

father’s mistress. Her goal is to seek revenge, expel this woman, do harm for 

harm’s sake. 

Ambricourt, then, is a spiritual wasteland where all is resentment, despair and 

pride... and no place for forgiveness or love. The priest is himself so weak, so 

clumsy, he can bring no peace to all this suffering or lead these stray souls back to 

God. Suffering himself from stomach pains, he hasn’t enough strength to fight. 

And yet, despite his poor health, his own doubts and lack of experience, the priest 

attempts the impossible. Though Chantal withdraws into her shell of pride, he 

succeeds, after a dramatic confrontation, in bringing the Countess around to 

resignation and reborn faith. But no one will know of this victory, other than God. 

Shortly after the priest’s visit, the Countess dies and he’s expelled from the 

Chateau, as if he were responsible for her death. What good would it do to say that 

he had saved her for Eternity? 

And who will believe him capable or judge him worthy, now that it is known that his 

diet consists of stale bread and cheap wine; this man of God is nothing but a 

drunkard. 

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His stomach pains now unbearable, the priest consults a specialist in Lille. He is 

diagnosed with stomach cancer. He pays a visit to a former seminary schoolmate 

who has abandoned his vows and now lives with a woman he’s not married to. The 

priest dies in their shabby apartment, without having received last rites. 

This is his final trial. “What does it matter?” he says in his last breath. “All is grace.” 

DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST: BACKGROUND 

The first screen adaptation of the Bernanos novel was by Jean Aurenche and 

Pierre Bost 3 , “the prettifiers and popularizers of literary classics.” In his first major 

essay, "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema,” François Truffaut turned Diary of a 

Country Priest into a cause célèbre: “With delectation, Truffaut recounts the 

humiliating reception Aurenche and Bost’s script was given by the novel’s author 

shortly before his death in 1948 and the joy thereafter… when Robert Bresson’s 

version was accepted enthusiastically.” 

While excoriating the liberties taken with his novel [by Aurench and Bost], 

Bernanos encouraged other scenarists to try their hand at “dreaming his novel 

over again in the language of cinema,” for he had been genuinely excited by the 

idea of the adaptation, especially since Jean-Louis Barrault wanted the lead role 

desperately, and Bernanos had loved him in Children of Paradise (1945)… 

It was in 1948 that Bresson began to compose his version at the behest of an 

ambitious young producer, Pierre Gérin. With Bernanos’s death in July 1948, 

however, and after a perusal of Bresson’s austere and unconventional script, Gérin 

pulled out and sold his rights to Bresson. When Bernanos’s literary executor, 

Albert Béguin, accepted Bresson’s proposal, the French national production 

agency, Union Général du Cinéma, agreed to back the film as a special one-time 

venture. 

…Bresson chose for his hero a young Swiss actor from among a great many 

candidates, all practicing Catholics. For over a year Bresson and [Claude] Laydu 

met each Sunday to discuss the role. Laydu lived for a time in a monastery to 

accustom himself to priestly gestures so that he would, in Bresson’s formulation, 

no longer be an actor but a model, a pure form, unconscious and instinctive, to be 

sculpted by light and camera. 

Most of the other actors were nonprofessionals, usually acquaintances with whose 

faces Bresson felt familiar. The shooting…took place in the precise area of 

3 Known for their literary adaptations and later attacked by the New Wave as architects of the 

“cinema of quality,” Aurenche and Bost collaborated on the screenplays for more than 30 films, 

including Devil in the Flesh (1945), La Symphonie Pastorale (1946) and Forbidden Games (1951). 

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Bernanos’s ancestral home, the north coast of Calais. Plagued with 

uncharacteristically sunny weather, Bresson worked endlessly on the minutiae of 

the indoor sequences, all of which were shot in the buildings of the area. 

The French press covered the making and premiere of the film with awe and pride. 

They helped guide it to a new audience consisting of intellectuals and the pious – 

people who seldom went to the cinema. They also encouraged cinephiles to see 

this particular film more than once. In this way Diary of a Country Priest opened up 

new options in the conception, realization, and exploitation of a film, options which 

would be occasionally exercised only a decade later by the directors of the New 

Wave. 

Excerpted from “Desperation and Meditation” by Dudley Andrew, published in Modern 

European Filmmakers and the Art of Adaption, eds. Andrew Horton and Joan Margetta 

(Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York, 1981). 

BRESSON ON DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST 

The following interview was conducted by journalist Jean Douchet in 1950 

on the set of Diary of a Country Priest: 

The Diary of a Country Priest unit is installed in the half-empty chateau of the Due 

de Reggio. Today, they’re shooting in an annex, a little house of white stone that 

stands out against the red brick of the village. The rooms inside were so small that 

the walls had to be knocked down in order to shoot. One of these rooms now 

represents the rectory kitchen. The next room is jammed with the unit’s 

equipment: camera, tracks, etc. 

Bresson, very calm, superintends the lighting. Of medium height, distinguished 

appearance, graying hair, he bears little resemblance to the director of legend. 

One’s first impression is of a chilly and self-confident intellectual. But you soon 

notice his restlessness, his dissatisfaction. 

We’ve reached the point where the Countess has just sent the priest a letter and a 

locket – a souvenir of her dead child. This morning, I’m to see the reading of the 

letter. The set is quickly lit; a simple emphasis on the priest, seated at his kitchen 

table, the letter he holds in his left hand and the locket in his right, a few objects 

strewn over the table: his notebooks, a missal, some crusts of bread. 

Behind him, the cook is standing by the fireplace; the walls are white and bare. 

Bresson comes up to his actor, Claude Laydu, who has been studying the script. 

He makes him read it. He calls for a choke in the voice, a halting delivery, long 

pauses. “Don’t forget that this letter has an intense emotional effect on you.” (He 

frequently begs for this intensity during the shooting.) Bresson works on the actor 

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as the sculptor models his clay. Then he goes on to the action: seated on the 

truck, facing the actor, he demonstrates the gestures he wants. First of all, a 

simple detail: the letter must be folded in such a way that the camera can see its 

black edges—for the countess is still in mourning for her son. Laydu must sit up 

straight, assume the expression of a man deeply stirred, yet still in control of 

himself. In his right hand he’s to finger the chain of the locket. In one of his 

pauses, he must let it slip through his fingers, then gather it up again. Here the 

camera tracks back, shortly and sharply. When perfect coordination is achieved 

between the reading of the letter, the actor’s gestures, and the camera movement, 

shooting can begin. The shot is captured after twenty-four false starts. 

Work like this is exhausting for the actor. Last night, a female cast member 

apparently fainted during a take. And this wasn’t the first such incident; no one 

can keep count of the crises de nerfs. 4 I witness a violent altercation between the 

calm Bresson and the gentle Laydu. The director tortures his players – not to force 

from them all that they’re capable of, but so as to leave nothing to their own 

initiative. Laydu tells me of his weariness, and I sense acutely the actor’s revulsion 

to his director’s methods. As for the rest of the unit, apart from the sound engineer, 

they’re reduced to a semi-inactivity, with the result that their attitude toward the 

director has hardened into a sort of ironic hostility – accentuated by the fact that 

this unit is a homogeneous body, working together now on their third or fourth film. 

But Bresson remains unaffected. 

I take advantage of the lunch break to interview Monsieur Bresson. 

What has been your approach to Bernanos’s novel? 

Respectful – of its construction, propositions, etc. I’ve taken most of the dialogue 

from the book. 

We went on to talk of the film’s style. 

Very plain. The photography is simple: no effects; no sophistication. 

You’re seeking an abstract style – something like Dreyer’s? 5 

I have no theory. As far as possible, I try to eliminate anything that may distract 

from the interior drama. 

You’re shooting against natural backgrounds. Does that mean that you 

attach special importance to them? 

4 Crises de nerfs: hysterics 

5 Carl Theodor Dreyer made the silent masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc and other stark 

films about faith. 

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The natural backgrounds will be very little seen, but their presence will be known, 

and that’s enough. 

On what portion of the novel have you based your adaptation? It’s hardly 

more than a prolonged meditation. [This made him start, as I thought it 

would.] 

To me, the cinema is an exploration within. Within the mind, the camera can grasp 

anything. 

Judging by Les dames du Bois de Boulogne 6 , you place great importance on 

sound. 

Certainly. 

Have you had many difficulties in the making of this film? 

Oh? [as in “What do you mean?”]. 

I don’t dare venture any further, being quite sure that it wasn’t just a matter 

of material struggles. 

Excerpted from “Bresson on Location” by Jean Douchet, first published in Sequence #13, 

1951, reprinted in The Films of Robert Bresson: A Casebook, ed. Bert Cardullo (Anthem 

Press, London, 2009). 

ANDRE BAZIN 7 ON DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST 

If The Diary of a Country Priest impresses us as a masterpiece, and this with an 

almost physical impact, if it moves the critic and the uncritical alike, it is primarily 

because of its power to stir the emotions, rather than the intelligence, at their 

highest level of sensitivity… 

We find the critical field divided into two extreme groups. At one end those least 

equipped to understand Diary and who, by the same token, have loved it all the 

more without knowing why; at the other end those "happy few" who, expecting 

something different, have not liked it and have failed to understand it. It is the 

strangers to the cinema, the men of letters, amazed that they could so love a film 

and be capable of freeing their minds of prejudice, who have understood what 

Bresson had in mind more clearly than anyone else. 

6 Bresson’s second film, released in 1945. 

7 Bazin (1918-1958) was one of France’s most influential film critics and theorists. Among his 

disciples was François Truffaut, who dedicated his first feature, The 400 Blows, to Bazin’s memory. 

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Admittedly, Bresson has done his best to cover his tracks. His avowal of fidelity to 

the original from the first moment he embarked on the adaptation, his declared 

intention of following the book word for word, conditioned us to look for just that, 

and the film only serves to prove it... He prunes even the very essentials, giving an 

impression as he does so of a fidelity unable to sacrifice one single word without a 

pucker of concern and a thousand preliminary twinges of remorse. Again, this 

pruning is always in the interest of simplification, never of addition. It is no 

exaggeration to say that if Bernanos had written the screenplay he would have 

taken greater liberties with his novel. He had, indeed, explicitly recognized the right 

of the adaptor to make use of his book according to the requirements of the 

cinema—he had the right, that is, "to dream his story over."… 

If he had really been faithful to the book, Bresson would have made quite a 

different film. Determined though he was to add nothing to the original—already a 

subtle form of betrayal by omission—he might at least have chosen to sacrifice the 

more literary parts for the many passages of ready-made film material that cried 

out for visualization. Yet he systematically took the opposite course. When you 

compare the two, it is the film that is literary while the novel teems with visual 

material… 

The pattern of the film's unfolding is not that of tragedy in the usual sense, but 

rather in the sense of the medieval Passion Play, or better still, of the Way of the 

Cross, each sequence being a station along that road. We are given the key to this 

particular truth by the dialogue in the hut between the two curés, when the one 

from Ambricourt reveals that he is spiritually attracted to the Mount of Olives. … 

Bresson never condenses the text; he cuts it. Thus what is left over is a part of the 

original. Like marble from a quarry, the words of the film continue to be part of the 

novel. Of course the deliberate emphasis on their literary character can be 

interpreted as a search after artistic stylization, which is the very opposite of 

realism... 

It is unlikely that there exists anywhere in the whole of French cinema, perhaps 

even in all French literature, many moments of more intense beauty than in the 

medallion scene between the curé and the countess. Its beauty does not derive 

from the acting or from the psychological and dramatic values of the dialogue, nor 

indeed does it derive from the scene's intrinsic meaning. The true dialogue that 

punctuates the struggle between the inspired priest and a soul in despair is, of its 

very nature, ineffable. The decisive clashes of their spiritual fencing match 

therefore escape us. Their words announce, or prepare the way for, the fiery touch 

of grace… 

Bresson disposes once and for all of that commonplace of criticism according to 

which image and sound should never duplicate each other. The most moving 

moments in the film are those in which text and image are saying the same thing, 

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each, however, in its own way. The sound never serves simply to fill out what we 

see. It strengthens what we see and multiplies it, just as the echo chamber of a 

violin echoes and multiplies the vibrations of the strings… 

It would be futile to look for Diary's devastating beauty simply in what is explicit. I 

doubt if the individual frames in any other film, taken separately, are so deceptive... 

Up to now, film tended to substitute for the novel in the guise of its aesthetic 

translation into another language… Diary, however, is something else again… 

There is no question here of a translation, no matter how faithful or intelligent. Still 

less is it a question of free inspiration with the intention of making a duplicate. It is 

a question of building a secondary work with the novel as foundation. In no sense 

is the film "comparable" to the novel or "worthy" of it. It is a new aesthetic creation, 

the novel so to speak multiplied by the cinema. 

Excerpted from “Diary of a Country Priest and the Stylistics of Robert Bresson” by André 

Bazin, from Cahiers du cinema #3 (1951); translated by Hugh Gray in Bazin’s What is 

Cinema? (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967) 

ROBERT BRESSON (Director/Writer) 

The known facts of Robert Bresson’s life are as elliptical and mysterious as many 

of his films. Though his official year of birth was 1907, he was in fact born in 1901, 

in Bromont-Lamothe, in the Auvergne region, the son of a military officer. His first 

vocations were painting and, occasionally, photography. 

He entered the film industry in the early 30s, working as a screenwriter and 

assistant on a handful of films. In view of his later career, Bresson made one of the 

most surprising of writing-directing debuts in 1934. Les Affaires publiques was a 

medium-length screen farce, which featured a famous clown named Béby (the 

subject of Jean-Pierre Melville’s first film short in 1946) and future Grand Illusion 

player Marcel Dalio. Long believed lost, it was rediscovered (in a truncated 

version) at the Cinémathèque Française in the mid-80s. Fifty years later, Bresson 

remarked: “Seeing it again, I was surprised to more or less find the way I seize on 

things and put them together, the way in which the shots follow one another.” 

Bresson had to wait another decade before making his feature film debut. After 

being a POW, he returned to Occupied Paris to find backers for his film projects. 

His first two films had distinctive literary pedigrees: Les Anges du péché (1943), a 

spiritual melodrama set in a convent, was scripted by Jean Giraudoux, and Les 

Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1944-45), was adapted by Jean Cocteau from 

Diderot’s Jacques le Fataliste. Both were cast with professional actors, against 

whom Bresson would revolt beginning with his next film, Diary of a Country Priest 

(1951), an adaptation of Georges Bernanos’s novel that brought the filmmaker to 

international attention. Diary marked the birth of Bresson’s ascetically mature 

11



screen style. By the end of the decade, Bresson produced two other masterpieces, 

A Man Escaped (1956), an extraordinary blend of prison escape movie suspense 

and spiritual quest no doubt enriched by his own experiences as a POW, and 

Pickpocket (1959), the first film for which Bresson wrote an original scenario not 

adapted from a pre-existing work. 

Bresson’s next film, The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) is often considered to be his 

least successful film, its austerity making Dreyer’s version seem lavish by 

comparison. On the other hand, Bresson reached his critically acclaimed apogee 

with Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) and Mouchette (1967), the latter again based on 

a Bernanos novel 8 . He turned to Dostoevsky for the plots of his next two films: 

Une femme douce (1969) was his first in color and introduced French actress 

Dominique Sanda, and Four Nights of a Dreamer (1972). 

Lancelot of the Lake (1974) was Bresson’s second period recreation (after Joan of 

Arc) and also divided the critics. Nor was The Devil Probably (1977) rated among 

Bresson’s finest works. Bresson was 81 when he made his last film, L’Argent 

(1982), based on a Tolstoy novella. Shown at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, it 

shared a consolation prize (the Grand Prix du Cinéma de Création) with Andrei 

Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia 9 . During the 80s, Bresson tried in vain to mount a 

production of Genesis, a re-telling of the Bible. 

Bresson published a volume of observations and aphorisms on the cinema in 

1975, Notes sur le cinématographe (inaccurately translated as Notes on the 

Cinematographer in its English language edition). 

Robert Bresson died on December 18, 1999 at the age of 98. 

GEORGES BERNANOS (Author) 

Georges Bernanos was a French Catholic author whose works explored the 

principals of Christianity through the spiritual conflicts of his characters. He served 

in World War I and was wounded several times. He wrote his first book, Sous le 

soleil de Satan, in 1926. 

Diary of a Country Priest was written during a dark period of Bernanos’s life. He 

suffered a serious motorcycle accident, which left him crippled and with financial 

difficulties and creative uncertainty. In 1934, he suddenly left France to live in 

Majorca, where Diary was written. Published in 1936, it won the Grand Prix du 

Roman de l’Académie Française 10 . 

8 Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette. Both Balthazar and Mouchette have been reissued by Rialto. 

9 Ironically, Tarkovsky was an ardent admirer of Bresson’s work and called Diary of a Country 

Priest his favorite film. 

10 Grand prize for the best novel of the year, awarded by the prestigious French Academy. 

12



An initial supporter of Franco, he became disillusioned with the future dictator after 

witnessing the Spanish Civil War. Perceiving the danger of war throughout Europe, 

he emigrated to South America and lived mostly in Brazil until after World War II, 

though his sons returned to France to fight. He was critical of the Vichy regime 

and supported the Resistance. After the liberation, Charles de Gaulle invited him 

back to France to take a government post. Bernanos returned, but not to politics. 

He died in 1948. In addition to Diary, two of his books were adapted to the screen: 

Sous le soleil de Satan, filmed by Maurice Pialat in 1987, and Nouvelle histoire de 

Mouchette (1937), which became Bresson’s Mouchette. 

In his book Bernanos: His Political Thought and Philosophy, Thomas Steven 

Molnar writes, “The world of Bernanos’s novels reflects his main preoccupation: 

what is the position of the saint in a world teeming with the most complicated, the 

most sophisticated forms of evil? But, first of all, who is a saint? and what is evil? 

What happens when these two poles of spirituality come into contact? These are 

the problems that Bernanos peruses in all his works – in his political writings as 

well as in his novels. The spiritual man is not a strictly religious phenomenon; he 

is, rather, the man with a positive life whose being is heavy with the weight of God 

in him. He may be a simple peasant, a public figure, a young girl or a priest; in 

each case his life is centered on an Existence that is infinitely higher than his own.” 

In Bernanos: An Ecclesiastical Existence, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes: “What 

makes him a creator of Christian literature is not the fact that he daily went to 

Mass, or, if he couldn’t, that he prayed the texts of the Mass at home, that he went 

to confession every week… What made him a Christian writer was that he did 

these things with a conviction that welled up from the deepest parts of his being ...” 

In 1935, Bernanos wrote to Madame de La Noue, who believed that he based the 

character of Country Priest’s Count on her father, a landowner near Fressins, the 

village where Bernanos was raised: “I began Diary one evening last winter, having 

absolutely no idea where I was going with it. How many novels have I begun in this 

way, which never got past page twenty because they weren’t taking me anywhere! 

No matter! As soon as I take pen in hand, what at once begins emerging before 

me is my childhood, a very ordinary childhood like all others; and yet, it is from it 

that I draw everything I write as from an inexhaustible fountain of dreams: the 

faces and landscapes of my childhood, all mixed up, confused, shuffled helterskelter 

by this peculiar unconscious memory that makes me what I am – a novelist 

and God willing, also a poet… From a certain moment on, I’m not inventing 

anything: I simply retell what I am seeing. People I have loved pass before me on 

the screen, and I recognize them only a long time afterward when they have 

already stopped acting and speaking. Or it happens that I don’t recognize them at 

all, because they’ve been transformed little by little, forming, in conjunction with 

others, part of an imaginary creation more real to me than any living person.” 11 

11 Letter to Madame de la Noue (1935), quoted in Bernanos: An Ecclesiastical Existence by Hans 

Urs von Balthasar 

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CLAUDE LAYDU (The Priest of Ambricourt) 

Born in Brussels to Swiss parents in 1927, Claude Laydu studied acting with Jean- 

Louis Barrault 12 . He made his professional debut in the company of Jean Dasté 

before being tested and cast by Bresson for the title role of Diary of a Country 

Priest. His performance brought him international acclaim, as well as a best actor 

prize awarded by the Ciné-Revue magazine and a BAFTA nomination as Best 

Foreign Actor. His career continued in a minor key throughout the decade with 

supporting roles in such films as André Cayatte’s We Are All Murderers and 

Philippe Agostini and R. L. Bruckberger’s Dialogue of the Carmelites. In the early 

60s, Laydu pioneered children’s television programming when he created and 

produced the long-running “Bonne Nuit les Petits,” a nightly series of five-minute 

vignettes performed by marionettes and designed to prepare children for bed. 

ANDRE GUIBERT (The Priest of Torcy) 

As the tender-tough Priest of Torcy, Bresson cast the non-professional Guibert, 

pseudonym for Adrien Borel (1886-1966), a distinguished Freudian psychoanalyst. 

Borel at first rejected Bresson’s proposal, but the director wouldn’t take no for an 

answer. Borel finally agreed to take the part provided his real name not be used. 

JEAN RIVEYRE (the Count) 

A theatre administrator and minor actor, Riveyre (1904 - ?) seemed cut out to play 

a nobleman: his real name was Jean Bussard-Bivert de Saint-Araille. He played a 

hotel clerk in a key scene in Jacques Becker’s Touchez Pas Au Grisbi and 

appeared in several other Becker films. 

ANTOINE BALPETRE (Dr. Delbende) 

A familiar character actor in French films of the 40s and 50s, Balpetré (1898-1963) 

was a member of the Comédie Française from 1934 to1945. He played in the first 

films of Henri-Georges Clouzot and was a staple figure in André Cayatte’s social 

dramas of the 50s. His stage credits included the role of Big Daddy in the French 

premiere of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Peter Brook (1956). 

12 One of France’s most beloved actors, Barrault is most famous to international audiences as the 

mime in Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise). Ironically, he’d desperately 

wanted the role of the priest himself. 

14



MARIE-MONIQUE ARKELL (the Countess) 

Marie-Monique Arkell was the real name of professional stage actress Rachel 

Behrendt (1893-1957). First wife of fellow Conservatoire student Pierre Fresnay, 

she appeared in several silent films, notably Charles Burguet’s The Mysteries of 

Paris (1922) and co-starred with Jean Gabin in Paris-Beguin (1931). 

NICOLE LADMIRAL (Chantal) 

Born in 1930, Ladmiral, who played the suicide-obsessed Count’s daughter with 

frightening intensity, threw herself under a Métro train in 1958. Before appearing in 

Diary, she co–narrated, with Georges Hubert, Georges Franju’s first film, a short 

documentary on slaughterhouses, Le sang des bêtes (1948). She had a minor 

role in Deux sous de violettes (1951) directed by Jean Anouilh. Jean-Luc Godard 

dedicated an episode of Histoire(s) du Cinema titled Fatale beauté (1997) to two 

women, one of whom was Nicole Ladmiral. 

NICOLE MAUREY (Louise) 

Born in 1925 in a suburb of Paris, Maurey was a dancer before being cast in her 

first film in 1944, Le Cavalier noir. She acted in films in France until she was 

brought to Hollywood to appear alongside Bing Crosby in Little Boy Lost (1953). 

Her career never took off, but she appeared in popular films such as Secret of the 

Incas (1954, alongside Charlton Heston), Me and the Colonel (1958, with Danny 

Kaye), and The Scapegoat (1959, with Bette Davis and Alec Guinness). She 

moved to England where she continued to act in films, the most notable, The Day 

of the Triffids (1962). She returned to France, focusing on television and madefor-TV 

movies, before retiring in 1997. 

15



LÉONCE-HENRI BUREL (cinematographer) 

In an extraordinary 50-year career bookended by collaborations with two of 

France’s great directors, Abel Gance and Robert Bresson, L. H. Burel (1892-1977) 

was one of the most technically adventurous of lighting cameramen. He entered 

the Film d’Art studios in 1913 as a cameraman and in 1915 began working almost 

exclusively with Gance; he shot all the films of his first major period, including 

J’accuse (1919) and La Roue (1923). Initially unavailable for Napoléon (1925-26), 

he later joined Gance’s production unit as “technical director”. His other important 

collaboration of the time was with Jacques Feyder, most memorably on 

Crainquebille (1922) and Visages d’enfants (1923-25). He shot two period 

extravaganzas for Russian émigré star Ivan Mozzhukin, Michael Strogoff (1925) 

and Casanova (1926) and worked for Rex Ingram and Léonce Perret at the 

Victorine Studios in Nice. During the sound period, he provided superb images for 

many mediocre commercial pictures, but there were occasionally fine films with 

Henri Decoin, Jean-Benoit Levy and Julien Duvivier. His first film for Bresson was 

Diary of a Country Priest, for which he won the award for Best Cinematography at 

the Venice Film Festival. Bresson and Burel went on to collaborate on A Man 

Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1958) and The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962). 

JEAN-JACQUES GRUNENWALD (composer) 

Jean-Jacques Grunenwald (1911–1982) was an internationally renowned concert 

organist and composer for piano, organ, and chamber orchestra. Between 1957 

and 1962, he recorded the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach. 

Grunenwald began composing for the cinema with Bresson’s Les Anges du Péché 

(1943); they also collaborated on Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) and 

Diary of a Country Priest. He scored 23 features (and a number of shorts), many 

of them solemn psychological or spiritual dramas such as Maurice Cloche’s biopic 

Monsieur Vincent (1947) and Henri Decoin’s La Verité sur Bébé Donge (1951). 

LENNY BORGER (subtitles) 

Diary is translator/subtitler Lenny Borger’s 35 th collaboration with Rialto Pictures, 

which began with the 1999 re-release of Grand Illusion. A former Paris Variety 

correspondent, the Paris-based, Brooklyn-born expatriate has also subtitled recent 

films by Bertrand Tavernier, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol and has written 

new titles for such classics as Rififi, Touchez pas au Grisbi, Contempt, The Battle 

of Algiers, Casque d’or, Le Corbeau, Rules of the Game, Les Demoiselles de 

Rochefort, Children of Paradise, Raymond Bernard’s Les Misérables, five Jean- 

Pierre Melville films released by Rialto (including Army of Shadows), and ten 

Godard films. Borger collaborated with Godard himself on the translation and 

subtitles for In Praise of Love and Notre Musique. 

16



RIALTO PICTURES 

Described as “the gold standard of reissue distributors” by Los Angeles 

Times/NPR film critic Kenneth Turan, Rialto Pictures was founded in 1997 by 

Bruce Goldstein. A year later, Adrienne Halpern joined him as partner. In 2002, 

Eric Di Bernardo became the company’s National Sales Director. 

Rialto’s past releases have included Renoir’s Grand Illusion; Carol Reed’s The 

Third Man; Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria; Jules Dassin’s Rififi; De Sica’s Umberto D; 

Godard’s Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Masculine Feminine and A Woman is a 

Woman; Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko; Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the 

Bourgeoisie, Diary of a Chambermaid, The Phantom of Liberty, The Milky Way and 

That Obscure Object of Desire; John Schlesinger’s Billy Liar; Clouzot’s Quai des 

Orfèvres; Mike Nichols’ The Graduate; The Maysles’ Grey Gardens; Mel Brooks’ 

The Producers; Jacques Becker’s Touchez Pas Au Grisbi; Franju’s Eyes Without A 

Face; and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le Flambeur and Le Cercle Rouge, for the 

first time in its uncut European version. 

Following Au Hasard Balthazar and Mouchette, Diary of a Country Priest is the 

third Bresson film released by Rialto. 

In 2002, the company released the critically acclaimed first-run film Murderous 

Maids, the chilling true story of two homicidal sisters, starring Sylvie Testud. Rialto 

celebrated a record-breaking 2004 with the previously unreleased, original 1954 

Japanese version of Godzilla and Gillo Pontecorvo’s groundbreaking The Battle of 

Algiers, which became one of the year’s top-grossing foreign films. 

In 2006, Rialto released Melville’s 1969 epic masterpiece Army of Shadows for the 

very first time in the U.S. Army of Shadows became the most critically acclaimed 

film of the year, topping many Ten Best lists, including those in The New York 

Times and Premiere, and was named Best Foreign Film of 2006 by the New York 

Film Critics’ Circle, in addition to receiving special awards from both the Los 

Angeles and National Society of Film Critics. Rialto’s re-release of Alberto 

Lattuada’s Mafioso, a dark comedy starring Alberto Sordi, was the unqualified 

highlight of the 2006 New York Film Festival. 2007 re-releases included Melville's 

Le Doulos, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Jacques Beineix's "second 

wave" thriller Diva. 

In 2008, the company had phenomenal success with Alain Resnais' 1962 arthouse 

classic Last Year at Marienbad. Rialto also released Robert Hamer's rediscovered 

masterwork of “Brit Noir,” It Always Rains on Sunday, and undertook its second hit 

reissue of Godard's Contempt. Another successful re-release was Max Ophuls' 

legendary film Lola Montès in a definitive new 35mm restoration, which was 

showcased to enormous acclaim at the Cannes and Telluride Film Festivals and 

17



was the spotlight retrospective of the 2008 New York Film Festival. 

Rialto’s recent releases have included the U.S. premiere of Godard’s Made in 

U.S.A, the 40th anniversary re-release of Costa-Gavras’ Academy Award-winning 

political thriller Z, starring Yves Montand and Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Pierre 

Melville’s legendary wartime drama Léon Morin, Priest, starring Jean-Paul 

Belmondo, and John Boulting’s Noir classic Brighton Rock, adapted from Graham 

Greene’s novel of the same name and starring Richard Attenborough. 

Rialto began 2010 with the 25th anniversary release of Ran in celebration of Akira 

Kurosawa’s centennial and followed it with the release of the 50th anniversary 

restoration of Godard's Breathless. Breathless was the company's 50th release 

since its founding. 

In 1999, Rialto received a special Heritage Award from the National Society of Film 

Critics, and in 2000 received a special award from the New York Film Critic’s 

Circle, presented to Goldstein and Halpern by Jeanne Moreau. The two copresidents 

have each received the French Order of Chevalier of Arts and Letters. 

2007 marked Rialto’s tenth anniversary, a milestone that was celebrated with a 

retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Similar tributes were held 

at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York; the AFI Silver Theater in 

Washington, D.C.; and the SIFF Theater in Seattle. In May 2009, the San 

Francisco International Film Festival presented Goldstein with its prestigious Mel 

Novikoff Award. 

In addition to Diary of a Country Priest, the company’s 2011 releases include 

Public Speaking, Martin Scorsese’s portrait of humorist Fran Lebowitz (opening 

February 23 at Film Forum in New York), Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to 

Earth, starring David Bowie, and Alberto Cavalcanti’s rediscovered wartime thriller 

Went the Day Well?, in a new restoration to be unveiled in April at the TCM Classic 

Film Festival in Hollywood. 

O 

18



RIALTO PICTURES RELEASES 

2011 DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST 

PUBLIC SPEAKING 

WENT THE DAY WELL? (May) 

THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (summer) 

2010 RAN 

BREATHLESS (50 TH Anniversary) 

2009 MADE IN USA (U.S. premiere) 

Z 

LEON MORIN, PRIEST 

BRIGHTON ROCK 

THE THIRD MAN (60th Anniversary) 

2008 LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD 

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY 

CONTEMPT 

LOLA MONTES 

2007 MAFIOSO 

LE DOULOS 

DIVA 

2006 ARMY OF SHADOWS 

THE FALLEN IDOL 

FANFAN LA TULIPE 

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER 

2005 MASCULINE FEMININE 

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS 

THE TWO OF US 

CLASSE TOUS RISQUES 

MOUCHETTE 

2004 THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS 

GODZILLA (U.S. premiere of uncut Japanese version) 

HEARTS AND MINDS 

2003 LE CERCLE ROUGE (U.S. premiere of uncut version) 

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN 

TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI 

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AU HASARD BALTHAZAR 

EYES WITHOUT A FACE 

THE MILKY WAY 

2002 PEPE LE MOKO 

MURDEROUS MAIDS 

QUAI DES ORFEVRES 

UMBERTO D. 

THE PRODUCERS 

THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY 

2001 BAND OF OUTSIDERS 

BOB LE FLAMBEUR 

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE 

JULIET OF THE SPIRITS 

2000 RIFIFI 

THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE 

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID 

BILLY LIAR 

1999 THE THIRD MAN 

GRAND ILLUSION 

PEEPING TOM 

1998 NIGHTS OF CABIRIA 

GREY GARDENS 

1997 CONTEMPT 

THE GRADUATE 

Pressbook editors: Bruce Goldstein and Adrienne Halpern 

Synopsis & biographies written by Lenny Borger and Diana Wade 

New material © 2011 Rialto Pictures LLC 

rialtopictures.com/countrypriest 

20

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