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Roberto Rossellini, 1950 The details of Roberto's Rossellini's personal life do not suggest strong religiosity. A chain marrier and a film heavyweight, Rossellini seems better poised to espouse the sensuous aesthetic of a European dandy than the self-negation of a monk. Why then did he make a film about Saint Francis? In interviews, Rossellini cites the quest for a certain kind of faith, the need for belief as he struggled through the career-shattering Bergman scandal. This may be true, but affinities deeper than those of faith may have motivated his choice of Francis. For all his personal abnegation, Francis was a man of the world: his devotion to the poor, his compassion for the ill, and his connection to animals all suggest a man supremely concerned with carnal existence. His mission began with the body: he believed that by catering to the physical being, the spiritual one would fall into place. It is possible that Rossellini's worldlin...

directed by Robert Bresson, 1967 Bresson films don’t tell stories: they present blueprints. Mouchette’s rape is a wisp of smoke; her death a ripple on a pond. The rest of the film is a sequence of formal symbols, arranged in chronological order and designed to show how these events ensue. It is a dark, vivid, boring, and unforgettable film. Bresson’s characters never cry on screen, ill-used, abused, or undone though they be. Emotion does not edify: consequence is all. The drama that plays itself out in a Bresson film is deliberately stripped of verisimilitude, reduced to a sequence of significant sentences, inexpressive faces, and long silences. Most stories show both the good and the bad sides of their characters. Mouchette dwells on the bad. There is not a single act of selfless good will in the film. Mouchette dies not because of the bad things that happen to her, but because of the unbearable tedium of such a predictable...