Le Sorcier du ciel (1949)
Directed by Marcel Blistène

Film Review

It probably wasn't Marcel Blistène's intention, when taking on a biopic of one of the Catholic Church's most revered saints, to deliver something that is only slightly less frightening than The Omen and The Exorcist combined, but this is what he ended up with.  To say that Le Sorcier du ciel is one of the weirder French films of the 1940s is putting it mildly.  It is strange beyond belief, and if it doesn't prompt you to renounce the Devil and throw your lot in with Christianity, it will almost certainly give you nightmares for the rest of your life.  There's scarcely a French horror film that is anywhere near as scary as what this supposedly reverential biopic foists on its unsuspecting audience in its more spookily deranged moments.

And it's not as if Marcel Blistène had any particular association with the horror genre or fantasy in general.  He directed only ten films, most of which are happily forgotten today.  Blistène's forte was the conventional melodrama, two of which feature Édith Piaf making a fairly decent stab at being a dramatic actress - Étoile sans lumière (1946) and Les Amants de demain (1959).   Blistène's most well-regarded film is Macadam (1946), a stylish film noir which he took over from Jacques Feyder and which helped to set Simone Signoret on the road to stardom.   The creepy expressionistic design of this film is taken a few steps further in Le Sorcier du ciel, providing the terrifying sequences in which the protagonist (a young Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, better known as the Curé d'Ars) fights his personal battle against the Devil.

Le Sorcier du ciel is set in France in the years following the Revolution and Napoleon's wars.  It is a heathen land - godless, debauched and profligate, eerily evocative of Hieronymus Bosch's lurid landscapes (only in grimly oppressive black and white).  As he makes his way through this forsaken Hell-on-Earth, the central priest (inexpressively but effectively portrayed by Georges Rollin) encounters nothing but hostility from the happily licentious inhabitants of Ars.  To add to his woes, he has Satan constantly whittering in his ear like a second-rate Valentine Dyall telling him he has backed the wrong horse and is doomed to fail.

It is the priest's struggle with Satan (or, should that be the Satanic side of his own nature?) that is the most interesting part of the film, certainly the part that Blistène and his cinematographer Charles Bauer had most fun with.  Like pretty well all biopics, Le Sorcier du ciel fails to do justice to its subject, and indeed most of Vianney's long and eventful life is overlooked as the film confines itself almost exclusively to his eventful first few years in Ars.  However, as a depiction of a man's struggle against his darker instincts the film is startlingly effective, and seldom in cinema does Satan have a more tangible presence than he does here, helped by a supremely demonic chorus of lighting and sound effects.

Film Synopsis

One day in 1818, a humble village priest in his early thirties is making his way down a country road to his new parish, in the town of Ars.  As is typical across France after the Revolution and Napoleonic wars, the inhabitants of Ars are indifferent to religion.  Sunday is no longer a day of worship but a day like any other, with work during the day and merrymaking in the evening.  On his arrival, the priest immediately arouses mistrust and suspicion.  He is not only mocked for the austere life he leads, he is considered by some to be a bad influence.  As he tries in vain to redeem the faithless people of Ars, the priest has his own faith put to the test by Satan.  When the priest cures a crippled boy of his affliction, a miracle is proclaimed and he begins to have an influence on the community.  Once again Satan taunts him, claiming ownership of the miracle.  The priest's ultimate triumph over Satan strengthens his purpose and by the time of his death he will have achieved a complete spiritual transformation of Ars...