Georges Bernanos' novel concerns a young country priest who, in his simplicity and purity, suffers the scorn of his parishioners. Robert Bresson faithfully adapted the novel to the screen, using Bernanos' original dialogue and diary entries; what he cut from the novel seems only to add to this fidelity. (Critic Albert Beguin notes, "The film's true merit is in having rejected everything in the novel that could be already thought of as 'cinematic' in the popular sense of the word.") The austere narrative is punctuated by images of the priest's journal accompanied by a low-toned, voice-over reading. Episode by episode, like stations of the cross, the priest progresses through pain to grace. The production itself was marked by a devotion which is evident in the result; Claude Laydu, the young Swiss stage actor who plays the priest, fasted for periods in order to achieve the authenticity of his role. In his exterior passivity and inner strength-and in his final words, "What does it matter? All is grace"-the priest, seen today, stands as a metaphor for Bresson and his unique position in the world of cinema.