This movie gets a lot of details right (or almost right) concerning the life of St. Bernadette. Song of Bernadette was beautifully written, but there wasn't as much effort to be accurate. Hence, this movie is great if you want a clearer idea of the life of this saint, and the circumstances she experienced. She is interpreted quite a bit differently from Song of Bernadette: with an emphasis on her human weaknesses to the point of melodrama. The movie received a PG rating because of some strong derogatory language that is aimed at Bernadette by some who were against her. The movie ends with her entrance into the convent, and the story is picked up in a sequel: The Passion of Bernadette, which I consider to be a better, more focused movie than this one.
Plot summary
In 1857, an unemployed miller moves his family into grim lodgings; his wife takes in laundry. In February of 1858, at the Massabielle grotto, their 14-year old asthmatic, illiterate daughter, Bernadette, sees a light she later distinguishes as a beautiful young woman. The girl converses with the woman over the next few months. Crowds follow her and people are cured by the waters from a spring Bernadette has cleared. Secular authorities are threatened by the popular gatherings and subject the girl to police inquiry and medical review. The local monsignor is also skeptical, then becomes Bernadette's champion. She maintains her forthright simplicity and untutored wisdom throughout.
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Accurate, funny, but not a masterpiece
An interesting side by side comparison to Song of Bernadette
When I was in Lourdes, I wanted to see this version, which plays daily at the small movie theatre -- but the theatre had shut down for the season. I finally got to see this on DVD recently. I was aware that the version with Jennifer Jones, "The Song of Bernadette" took quite a few dramatic liberties with the story so I was eager to see how this version compared. The attempt here is to present a more accurate re-telling of both the miracles as well as Bernadette's family life. We don't have the antagonists in this like we do in the original and we don't have much of the dramatic conflicts that drive the original so as a narrative, this doesn't work as well, but the story is told with beauty and simplicity. The settings far more accurately represent what Lourdes really looked like too. I think this is well worth watching for anyone interested in Lourdes.
The second song of Bernadette.
Critically speaking ,this new version of Bernadette Soubirous' s life was greeted with a poor reception in its native France.Coming just after critically-acclaimed Alain Cavalier's "Therese" (de Lisieux) ,the movie got unanimous thumb downs.And yet what can you expect from Jean Delannoy ,Jean Luc Godard's favorite bete noire?This movie seems to have been made a long time ago.Delannoy,however, has always had spiritual concerns (Dieu a besoin des hommes,la symphonie pastorale)and I'm not sure that,at almost 90,he was trying to capitalize on Cavalier's success.
"Bernadette" did not deserve such a harshness.As Delannoy says in the cast and credits ,Bernadette was simplicity itself and that's what we tried to do here.A naive uneducated girl ,her answers to the shrinks ,the priests and the bourgeois were not unlike those of Joan of Arc during her trial:simple but witty.And I dig the last lines (A nun) -C'est ça Bernadette? (the Saint) -Oui,c'est ça!
Jean Delannoy was to continue in the pious vein with "Marie de Nazareth" but that last effort lacks even the humor we find in "Bernadette" and it was a disappointment.