MONSIEUR VINCENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 534, 16 September 1949, Page 19

MONSIEUR VINCENT

(Robert. Kapferer Productions) ANY things surprised and delighted me in Monsieur Vincent, but what delighted me most (though it hardly surprised me) about this French film on the life of St. Vincent de Paul was the contrast it afforded in theme, atmosphere, characterisation and every other respect, with the vulgar emotionalism and perverted sentimentality of many of MHollywood’s so-called "religious" productions, Monsieur Vincent is a good film, and it would be pleasant to believe that by the force of ‘example it might be the cause of good in others -though one would, I suspect, require the faith of Monsieur Vincent himself to believe that, Simple, uncomplicated virtue is not dramatised easily, and the commercial producers will no doubt still find it less exacting to rely upon that trace of original sin in all of us which finds depravity more engrossing than goodness. \ It is only fair to point out, however, that Monsieur Vincent was not precisely a commercial-production. The directorproducer (Maurice Cloche) secured the money he needed through the agency of a Catholic organisation-the Office Familial de Documentation Artistiquewhich formed a "Monsieur Vincent Association" to back the production. But with the freedom so obtained he has made a film of uncompromising honesty and deep religious feeling-and ‘that in spite of the almost complete absence from it of the forms and ceremonies of religion. Absent, too, are almost all the conventional devices of drama. Around the central figure the minor characters are for the most part barely sketched in, though in one or two cases (Richelieu, for example) a Yemarkable vitality has been produced with the most economical treatment. No sub-plot distracts attention from the principal theme or affords momentary relief from it; no personal adversary stands in opposition to the heroic figure of the priest, only the vast anonymous misery of the poor. Yet from the first scene Monsieur Vincent is alive with drama and the sense of conflict, the physical conflict which Monsieur Vincent wages unceasingly against poverty, misery, squalor, disease, and hunger among the poor, the equally protracted conflict against social prejudice and indifference, and a more perilous conflict within himself. For this most practical of all the saints was an accomplished man of affairs, a notable figure in the society of his day, the confidant of royalty, one who, in fact, might easily have accomplished much by remote control (for he was an organiser of genius), and avoided too close a contact with the hungry and the diseased. And one who might also have succumbed to the sins ‘of soft living and spiritual pride. ‘ Some critics have condemned an episodic quality in Monsieur Vincent, and it is true that the scene shifts swiftly, and frequently, from court to country parish, to castle, to slum, to the galleys, and back to court again. But these changes of scene are not simply introduced for dramatic contrast, though

the contrast is at times shocking enough. Nor are they just changes in direction, as Monsieur Vincent moves from one field of service to another. Each is also a time of spiritual crisis and inner struggle." It was this quality of development in the central character which seemed to me the supreme virtue. of the picture. Were I a Frenchman I might hesitate in apportioning the credit for this between the scriptwriter (Jean Anouilh) and the actor (Pierre Fresnay). The English sub-titles are as good as subtitles could be, but not even a completely English tlubbing could, I believe, do justice to some passages in the script. But since I was relying on my eye rather than my ear, it was Pierre Fresnay all the way. He was Monsieur Vincent; not a gesture or an inflexion was without significance. Other characters may have been two-dimen-sional; he was not only three-dimen-sional, he was solidly flesh and blood.