Deconstructing Christianity in Contemporary European Cinema

In his seminal article “Cinema and Theology,” André Bazin offers a rather damning account of a category of films that he labels “the priest's or nun's story.” ¹ Comparing the European iterations of this type (Angels of the Streets, 1943; Diary of a Country Priest, 1951—both dir. Robert Bresson) with some North American equivalents (The Bells of St. Mary's, 1945, dir. Leo McCarey; Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938, dir. Michael Curtiz), Bazin argues that the former offers a far “greater sophistication in the treatment of religious themes” ² but that, nonetheless, these films rest “on a glamorous myth, which is to say an extrinsic one for the most part”—that is, “the mystery of priesthood.”