Bresson has recreated the novel [Journal d'un Curé de Campagne], not simply made an adaptation of it in the conventional manner. He has been concerned to seek out the central core of the book—the spiritual development of the young country priest—and prune all the side issues not directly related to this main theme (but which are nonetheless an essential part of the novel), thereby intensifying the story and giving it the purity of a Racinean tragedy. (p. 128)

The director's personality is to be felt too in the film's tone: all the emotions are muted and there is a lack of violence or passion…. This continual understating of the emotions, together with the hero's essentially passive submission to God's will, gives the film its particular rhythm and makes the death of the Curé a real climax. (pp. 129-30)

[Again, in Un Condamné à mort s'est échappé] Bresson concentrates...