The Flowers of Saint Francis

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 worldliness had something of the same flavor, the differences lying principally in his technique and the scope of his target audience.

The film depicts Francis' devotion to the world as a haphazard, goofy, and awkward affair, a well-intentioned naivety advancing through a sequence of errors. The opening sketch shows Francis and his followers returning from Rome to their home in the hills, having just received a dispensation to go forth and preach. They are seen slogging through the rain, laughing, slipping, flopping in the mud, philosophizing, running, laughing some more. There is a sense that all experience is a gift, even if sometimes it is a soggy and cold one. Francis is clearly new to his role as a messiah, and insists on obedience, as if he were uncertain of his authority. By the last scene, however, when the monks part ways to preach, there is a sense that Francis has thoroughly understood his mission. Exchanging their homey circle of fellows for the cold comforts of the unknown, the monks appear to have made the transition from bumbling idealists to men with a consequent and well-defined vision.

The film was apparently panned when it opened, and I can see why: it is very simple, has nothing resembling camera work, the story is disjoint, and the acting amateurish. The non-professional actors do bring a sense of authenticity, but Rossellini's technique for directing these amateurs is very different from, e.g., Bresson's, for whom the whole point of using amateurs is not to have them act. One senses that Rossellini applies them rather too directly to a script of his own devising. (Though Fellini, a co-writer of the script, stated that working with Rossellini on this film taught him how to improvise: so perhaps this impression is incorrect.) But the film is not simple. Francis' disciples do horrible things in the name of goodness (one cuts off the leg of a living pig so as fulfill a dying man's request for soup) and Francis insistence on obedience is suspiciously redolent of a power grab. At its best, the film offers a dreamy glimpse into the power of faith. It suggests that the consistent application of elemental precepts can, in spite of errors, failure, anger, and despair, accrete to something luminous and triumphant.

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