This is a film made in 1950. It starts in a pretty miserable frame of mind and it gets even more miserable. It is black and white and the French sound quickly has deteriorated yet its inextricably moving. A young country priest battles with his unpopularity, doubts, and lack of faith, and finally a dose of stomach cancer.

He ends his last days staying with a friend in one of those depressing 1950s towns which I remember as a boy, when France seemed so backwards. Now it has leapt ahead of us. But at the end of the film, the Cure as he lays dying has a blessing from his old seminarian friend who says he cannot give it he is no longer a priest. The cure replies “all is grace, all is grace”.

Today’s reading from Hebrews 10:32-39 might have been intended for him.