Leon Morin, Priest: The Criterion Collection [Blu-ray] Reviews

Even though much of his cinematic reputation is built around a sterling series of gangster noirs he made in the 1960s, occasionally the astute filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville surprised his public with something decidedly offbeat and unexpected. Les Enfants Terrible, his film version of a Cocteau play, was one such one-off, and Army of Shadows took the hard-boiled tone of his noirs and transferred it to a period Resistance story. Perhaps most unusual for him, however, was his 1961 drama Léon Morin, Priest, a sober, thoughtful examination of spiritual awakening and desire that nimbly tiptoes around potential melodramatic conventions and emerges as a strong albeit measured character-driven dramatic vehicle for two French superstars of their day.

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