Click here to copy URL

Léon Morin, prêtre

1961

Jean-Pierre Melville

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva, Iréne Tunc, Nicole Mirel ...

7.0

449

Drama A little French town during the Occupation. Barny is a young sexually frustrated widow, living with her little girl France. She is also a communist militant, and one days she enters in a church, randomly choses a priest and starts criticizing the religion. But the priest is a young handsome clever one, Leon Morin. He does not offer her the reaction she was expecting. She is disturbated. She starts frequenting him, impressed by Morin's moral strength. [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Chris Peachment Time Out	"With perfect formal control and an extreme emotional intensity, [Melville] forges links between the disparate themes of the Occupation, profane love, and spiritual quest"
		Fernando F. Croce Slant	"It’s in its outwardly low-key yet emotionally charged—and deeply erotic—portrait of the turmoil of a woman’s soul (...) that the film most grips and endures (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"
		Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"The film remains strong for its performances, its inventive editing and framing, and its evocative rendering of the French occupation"
		Wesley Morris Boston Globe	"The movie is a strange, sensually suggestive discourse on the power of both spiritual and political seduction (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"
		J. Hoberman The New York Times	"A gripping movie, and also a great one."

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.