Leon Morin, Priest

Fed up with being “an auteur maudit known only to a handful of crazy film buffs,” Jewish atheist Melville accepted an offer of real stars and an actual budget to adapt Beatrix Beck’s autobiographical novel, a book he already considered “the most accurate picture I have read of life under the Occupation,” then had to talk an initially reluctant Belmondo – hot from Breathless – into taking the title role. Melville created a kind of fresco of the Occupation – play-it-safe baptisms of Communist and Jewish children; parades of Alpine-hatted Italian Bersaglieri and marching band Nazis; arguments with pro-Pétain and anti-Semitic co-workers; a Jewish colleague getting a shave, name change, and a ticket out; platonic same-sex crushes in a man-less world – but its center is Riva’s confusing, fascinating, tantalizing encounter with God and his servant Belmondo (successfully intellectual, sincere, and ultimately enigmatic in a change-of-pace role), their mutual underplaying making even theologica