Lo spretato

There are some comments about this film that say that it is a bad and silly one and such an excellent actor as Pierre Fresnay should not have accepted to act in it.

I think, just the opposite, that, even when the film is strange and has some weaknesses, the performance of Pierre Fresnay is so formidable that it converts the film in something excellent.

His performance is probably the best in history.

The film itself has a very polemic scene about the consecration of wine in the cabaret.

For somebody who does not believe that a priest – even a defrocked one – can convert it in Christ's blood, the scene is perhaps bizarre. But for somebody who has been raised in a catholic framework, it is very emotive even if quite unpleasant.

The scene of the death of the younger priest is tremendously shocking. But it is very well acted. Pierre Fresnay turns the crazy act of murder in something understandable within the temporal madness of his character, the tortured defrocked Morand who, in this terrible way, comes back to his duty.