Monsieur Vincent

A beautiful film for must be grateful to director and lead actor. Because, obvious, it represents more than an inspired biopic. No doubts, in the splendid interpretation of pierre fresnay, it offeres a slice from the life of Vincent de Paul.

But you feel this film as an interogation for yourself, again and again.

Because it is a wise crafted definition of the relation with the other, poor, ill, alone, brutal as result of cruel conditions of life, idealistic or lazy.

The discover of social aspects, from the men on the boat to the poor neighbors, from the abandoned babies to the oldnes and close death are the good points of this real moving film , so modern, including the technique aspects, so honest, grace including the impressive job of mister Fresnay.

More than a simple to defined masterpiece.

But a profound useful ball of questions.

A man with the history of Vincent De Paul would daunt any biographer trying to do him justice, but Maurice Cloche and company hold a decided edge over the monumental task. To undertake it with them, they have the mercurial Pierre Fresnay to play "Monsieur Vincent." Fresnay is critic John Simon's favorite actor, and if there was nothing more than "Grand Illusion" with which to justify his choice, it would still be a worthy one. This movie merely confirms his pre-eminence and our towering esteem.

It opens with De Paul entering the village Chatillon-les-Dombes where he is to assume the vacant post of parish priest and is welcomed with a stoning as he tries to save the life of a girl who has been boarded up in the house where her mother lays dead of what the villagers suspect is the plague. After petitioning the lord of the village to help without success, he takes matters into his own hands, acquiring the help of the church's caretaker to feed the famished child and bury the dead woman. He reprimands the villagers for their lack of charity, and sets out to administer the sacraments and help the family who took the orphaned girl in. He spurs on the people to such heights of charity with his sermons that they offer the family far too much to eat or store, and recognizing the waste that would ensue, he sets out to organize the people to provide for all those wanting with necessities.

The needs of the poor that Vincent De Paul tried to fill went far beyond the French countryside settings of Chatillon and Clichy. He rubbed elbows with nobility and even the royal family. This provided him with the opportunity to minister to the poor in all states of life, whether they were prison inmates or galley workers or refugees (of which there were thousands given the state of turmoil France was in at the time) or the unemployed. While he was breaking new ground on how the Church should organize itself to serve the poor (He founded the Ladies of Charity made up of noblewomen and the Daughters of Charity made up of women of lesser station.), he was also settling moral issues (The most dramatic one is the controversy he has with the charitable organizations over the taking in of foundlings.), advising against duelling, tutoring noblemen's children, and counselling priests and establishing new outlooks on how to take in new ones. The movie can only graze the surface of the phenomenal work of this great man. A much longer runtime would be in order; it could touch on the earlier part of De Paul's life (He had been abducted by Barbary Coast pirates and sold into slavery where he remained for two years under the control of an apostate priest turned Muslim whom he later converted and with whom he returned to France.) and deal with more controversial issues (His denouncing of the Jansenists; his failed plea with the minister Mazarin to leave France to stop the war.). Given the time "Monsieur Vincent" has to pay its homages, the movie uses it laudably well. Whatever its limitations, this is one of the greatest biographical movies ever made.

With a very young Michel Bouquet as a consumptive with whom Father De Paul shares his rented room and who opens the cleric's eyes to a society fraught with misery.

I saw this film at St. John's Prep in Brooklyn, NY, around 1959. The school was run by the Vincentian Fathers (Congregation of Missions-CM). I was surprised to see that Jean Anouilh had written the screenplay; he also wrote Becket. It was somewhat episodic. But I remember each one. He was not a patsy. Food line for the needy. He stops one man and feels his muscles and asks what's wrong with him. Instead, he steers him to a job on the docks. A job is a job and one could argue about unionizing later.

A very good biopic about a great man,Saint Vincent de Paul,whose charity,abnegation,generosity and humanity were so huge that Queen Anne d' Autriche used to call him "the kingdom's conscience" Filmed in black and white ,in a style close to early Bresson,the film features many unforgettable scenes : the reunion with the noble ladies who are willing to "do something" but whose world is far from them ,the Poor;the scene on the royal galley where the legend tells that Monsieur Vincent took the place of an exhausted galley slave .

Pierre Fresnay,whose unquestionable faith would turn to bigotry in his late parts ("le Défroqué" "Tant d'Amour Perdu" )finds here his lifetime part.Sometimes it seems that the Saint rose from the dead.

Like this?Try these....

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Pierre Fresnay stars as the famous Catholic saint. This film is a biography of the man but it doesn't really follow his entire life--just from the time he founded his charity for the poor until his death. So, exciting stuff in his life before this isn't even mentioned--such as his being captured and enslaved by Barbary pirates!! I think they chose to do that in order to tighten the focus of the film. Instead, it focused on the selflessness of the man, the wretchedness of the poor and the many good things he got his lady followers to do.

The film is very simply made and the film seems straight forward and without the excesses of some religious movies of the day. In other words, Vincent is a man who is driven--but with no halos or crazy music or insane stares into space. I liked the film and it's a religious movie that is approachable and excels with its simplicity.