Leon Morin, Priest

Trying to complete my Jean-Pierre Melville collection. This is mostly a story of repressed desire and love between Barny, a widow of a Jew and the titular priest, with curt lesbianism (Barny's love for her ebony boss) and curt paedophila (a Nazi soldier falls in love with her half-Jewish daughter of 6, albeit a brief innuendo). It is a bit boring and hardly as captivating as Melville's other adaptation of another book set in a similar era, The Silence of the Sea, which is more atmospheric and tense than this. Set during the Nazi occupation and directly after, the Catholic theology is a bit too much Christianity 101 but the interaction between Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Paul Belmondo is rivetting and compelling. And it ends with the typical Melville ending. Not really a good Melville effort, even if it did win the Venice Grand Prix (or whatever). 6/10