Monsieur Vincent (1947)

 Maurice Cloche's "Monsieur Vincent"


Centering on the life of 17th century priest Vincent de Paul, Maurice Cloche's 1947 French film "Monsieur Vincent" is a great biographical picture of an iconic man. Vincent de Paul, known historically as the priest who revolutionized the state of ministry in his time, focused all his time and efforts to serving the poor. The film demonstrates these efforts by Paul and ruminates on the state of class and our own sense of humanity.

Perhaps this is a bad analogy, but I find "Monsieur Vincent" to be somewhat of a prototype to 'spiritual' films to come later. While watching, I felt that it resembled Bunuel's 1959 film "Nazarin," Andrei Rublev's "Andrei Rublev," and perhaps even the works of Robert Bresson, like 1951's "Diary of a Country Priest." However, because "Monsieur Vincent" acts as a prototype to these films, it doesn't quite have the same spiritual essence that would be more fleshed out with these films to come. "Monsieur Vincent" has the structural bones of a film dealing with sacrifice to one's craft and sacrifice to God's will to service, but it only observes it, really. I didn't FEEL the existentialism with this film as I do with the others. That is certainly not to say I didn't feel sympathetic to Paul's plights and his cause or even feel anger towards the apathy and disregard of the wealthy elite, but it is more to say that a certain spiritual component was not available. Perhaps the medium of film hadn't quite arrived there yet, but "Monsieur Vincent" perhaps laid the foundation for it in 1947. 



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