A fallen world and a silent God: Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest

Robert Bresson's 1941Diary of a Country Priest is more interesting than it sounds (how's that for damning w/ faint praise?) - the kind of movie that could not and would not be made today and perhaps never again, a faithful (apparently, adaptation of a novel about the troubles and anxiety a young parish priest feels on his first assignment in a small village in, I think, Normandy. The film has the contemplative style familiar from other Bresson films - many close-ups of the face of the main characters, often distorted in spiritual agony (one particularly beautiful sequence goes back and forth from priest to young troubled woman in confessional), set against some bleak location shots of the village, often in chilly winter scenes, muddy roads, primitive and impoverished farm houses, and rude country physicians (very Flaubertian). What makes the film interesting is that the priest is universally disliked in the little village - he's somewhat of a moral scourge, a stick-in-the-mud, unable to relate to any of the parishioners, doctrinaire about the catechism and the rules of confession. He tries to do well - has an idea for example for a community recreation facility, but this goes nowhere, and he seeks counsel from an affable nearby priest, but he cannot relate to other people, he's entirely unsuited to this work. Also, he's very ill - the parishioners think he's an alcoholic, which he may be, but he's also weak and malnourished and, as we learn at the end (not much of a spoiler here), he is dying of stomach cancer. So there, to all you doubters. What makes the film a little less interesting is that the priest is not facing any great moral crisis - such as say in The Power and the Glory - he's just struggling to meet his obligations and perhaps to save a lost soul. One element of the film that I think may too easily be overlooked (the  otherwise excellent Criterion commentary does not mention this) is the role of social class: we see early on the priest's indifference to the request of an elderly working man, but he spends a great deal of his time at the home of local count, talking to the count, his wife, his daughter, and her governess (the count's mistress). Had he spent more time with the people of the village, he might have had a better reception. Or maybe not - the people in the village are almost universally despicable themselves, even the children. Not sure why Bresson's view (or the view of the novelist whom he adapted) is so bleak, but there are hints of Catholic allegory throughout - a fallen world, a would-be savior (who subsists on bread and wine), a silent god.