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Roberto Rossellini: History
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Rossellini's continuing investigation of the nature of history and myth in the re-telling of the story of St. Francis of Assisi and his band of friars, as they attain perfect harmony with nature. "The most beautiful film in the world" (Francois Truffaut). The DVD is a Criterion Collection Edition, and includes video interviews with actress Isabella Rossellini, film critic Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, and film historian Adriano Apra, essay by film scholar Peter Brunette, and more. In Italian with English subtitles. Italy, 1950, 75 mins.
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Throughout his career, Rossellini's more prominent pictures revealed an interest in the personal conflicts that emerge from issues of faith and the events of war. Hence, The Flowers of St Francis (1950) and Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954) treat religious figures from the annals of history, while General Della Rovere (1959) centres on the role of the Resistance. Starring neorealist luminary Vittorio De Sica, the latter won the Golden Lion at Venice.
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The net of Rossellini's influence of course, spreads far wider than those two circles. Within his lifetime, first of all. A trip to Brazil is mentioned, for instance; but the Rossellinian aspect of cinema novo (in Rocha, Guerra, etc) is not explored, nor (as Willemen has suggested) the filmmaker's effect on Cuba's "poor cinema"[10] . The critical admiration of Jean-Marie Straub for Rossellini in the '50s is mentioned, but not the links between the very particular "history films" he would go on to make with Danièle Huillet and such Rossellini movies as Blaise Pascal (1971) and The age of the Medici (1972).
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