La vie miraculeuse de Thérèse Martin

.....doing the earth good (Sainte Thérèse De Lisieux)

They say that when Duvivier made this movie ,he had already lost his faith.Twice ,the Devil comes back when Thérèse has her moments of doubt and fear and asks this dreadful question "what is there after death?NOTHING!"Considering the movies Duvivier would make after the silent age ,such a work is rather weird.

Unlike Alain Cavalier's "Therese"(1986),"La Vie Miraculeuse...." includes eerie scenes: the suffering Christ who shows the young girl her way,the shadow of the Christ carrying His cross on the wall of the church when her father leaves the church after her vows,the appearances of the evil (not more ridiculous than in,say, Terence Fisher's movies such as "the devil rides out" ),the petals showering down on the candles people light to ask the saint for her help;a saint whose popularity is huge ;I've seen a church devoted to her in East Europa.

Like Bernadette,she was a simple girl although her family was more educated and her parents wanted to become a monk and a nun (but you had to know Latin to become a monk in those days).Apart from the supernatural sequences ,Duvivier depicts Thérèse with a great simplicity :this simplicity is what makes her so endearing even to unbelievers.

Needless to say,there would never be such a perfect woman again in Julien Duvivier's canon.