The Cinematheque

“One of the most astonishing film debuts ever … Rarely have the seemingly opposite worlds of the spiritual and the erotic received such sublime, ennobling treatment.”

David Thomson, Time Out

Bresson’s first feature is, like its follow-up Les dames du Bois de Boulogne, more elegant and stylized than the sparer masterworks to come but nonetheless boldly announces the central Bressonian themes: isolation, suffering, martyrdom, and the struggle for redemption and grace. It also ranks among the great movies about nuns. A feisty, pampered young woman (Renée Faure) joins a Dominican convent dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminal women and devotes herself—far too single-mindedly, in the eyes of her superiors—to ​“saving” a bitter, hostile young convict (Jany Holt). Made during the German occupation, Les anges du péché was commissioned by Pathé, written with priest Raymond Léopold Bruckberger and playwright Jean Giraudoux, and shot in gorgeous monochrome by Philippe Agostini (who also filmed Les dames). Alain Resnais called it ​“a filmgoer’s dream come true.” Roland Barthes was also a great admirer.

In French with English subtitles

35mm print courtesy of the Institut français

“Films have been made before about religious orders, but never one of such spiritual intensity and rigour … For once a director is really concerned with religion, and has succeeded in giving it dramatic life—even for non-believers.”

Richard Roud, Film Culture