Le dialogue des Carmélites

Cinema has not been insensitive to Georges Bernanos , who ranks alongside with other great Catholic 20th-century writers, most notably Graham Greene, André Gide and Paul Claudel. One of Robert Bresson's masterpieces, 'Mouchette,' was adapted from Bernanos. 'Sous le soleil de Satan' turned out to be another interesting adaptation . But his most famous play is this Dialogue, a period piece which is an eloquent libel against repression on any cult freedom, no matter what kind of creed. Though the picture cannot be compared to the magnificent opera that composer Francis Poulenc extracted from the same text, it does record, with sincerity, the tragic episode when nuns, during the Terror regime, in the French Revolution, willingly became martyrs in the name of Christian faith and freedom of belief. Maybe revolutions cannot help being gruesome, but must they suspend belief beyond the rescue of the soul(s)?