A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish, only to be rejected by the apathetic and hostile rural congregation. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God.

As his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.

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