THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS Movie Review

Francesco, Giullare di Dio Francis, God's Jester

I saw Roberto Rossellini's 1950 The Flowers of St. Francis just once, at a screening at London's National Film Theatre more than 30 years ago. I remember it as being a charmingly relaxed, documentary-style series of episodes in the life of St. Francis and his disciples—a film so uninsistent in tone that it struck me as being unlike any film on a religious subject that I had ever seen. Rossellini created a number of such uncluttered, neorealist films on religious and historical figures such as Socrates, Augustine of Hippo, Descartes, and Jesus. His extraordinary 1966 film The Rise of Louis XIV was originally made for French television, but was screened theatrically in the U.S. Like The Flowers of St. Francis, the Louis XIV film consists of a series of terse episodes photographed flatly and without sentimentality, giving the viewer the vicarious experience of looking at history photographed by the camera, rather than recreated for the camera.

NEXT STOP … The Gospel According to St. Matthew, The Rise of Louis XIV, The Last Temptation of Christ

1950 75m/B IT Aldo Fabrizi, Brother Nazario Gerardi, Arabella Lemaitre; D: Roberto Rossellini; W: Father Antonio Lisandrini, Father Felix Morion, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini; C: Otello Martelli; M: Enrico Buondonno, Renzo Rossellini. VHS FCT