Customer Reviews

Eclipse Series 14: Rossellini's History Films - Renaissance and Enlightenment (Blaise Pascal / The Age of the Medici / Cartesius) (The Criterion Collection)

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I am an avid fan of Italian cinema, but one director I never really got into was Roberto Rossellini. I have seen Rome, Open City, Paisan, and Voyage to Italy, and I thought they were good films, but he was never one I talked about very much. Recently, I watched all of the 3 films in this Eclipse/Criterion series (actually, there are 3 made for TV films, two of which are essentially miniseries), and I was surprised how much I liked them all.

These 3 films are unlike anything I've ever really seen. I was really surprised by them. Near the end of the 1960's, Rossellini felt cinema was dead, and decided to make films for TV. He sincerely believed that television could be a true catalyst for change and for true educational purposes. Roberto believed ignorance was the biggest obstacle to progress (he has a point there), and he made these 3 films (and The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, a film for French TV that's available in a seperate Criterion edition) in a genuine effort to educate the masses of Italy. As to whether his intentions helped allievate the ignorance of people remains to be seen. The 3 films are surprisingly good.

The films are not very conventional at all. If you're expecting a sex filled, blood soaked, historically inaccurate Showtimes type series (or HBO series), you will be disappointed. If you're expecting films that will genuinely make you think and demand your full attention, you will more than satisified.

The 3 films have the same characteristics. Most of the shots are static, the takes are long, the performances are for the most part perfunctory, the dialogue is very dry and intellectual, yet all 3 of the films held my attention and are endlessly fascinating. The costumes and set design are absolutely first rate. In fact, some of the shots are reminiscent of Renaissance paintings (which I'm sure Rossellini meant to do). The camera work is quite good. The running times are very long. The Age of the Medici runs 4 1/2 hours (but is in 3 parts), Cartesius runs 162 minutes (and is in 2 parts), and Blaise Pascal clocks in just over 2 hours.

The Age of the Medici is the best of the films. It shows how Cosimo de Medici became a brilliant merchant and helped shaped Renaissance thought. Despite its 255 minute length, the machinations of Medici and the Italian court are fascinating. Cartesius is about Rene Descartes, and his struggles with finding a bridge between rational thought and the spiritual quest of being one with God and Jesus. Blaise Pascal is the saddest of the films, with Pascal going on his own Descartes like quest and dying at the end of the film. It's quite sad and moving, surprisingly so. These films remind me of the austerity of Bressons's work, in that all the emotion is drained from the performances (Bresson did this intentionally), and the emotions are supplied by the viewers. It's a challenge to watch these films, make no mistake about it. But they are worth the challenge and are quite inspiring, especially to those interested in the time of the films. I even broke out an old Descartes book that I had not read in many, many years after watching Cartesius.

I had never heard of these films until Criterion/Eclipse put them out. I'm glad they did. These 3 films (and The Taking of Power by Louis XIV) should all be seen. While they are difficult and challenging, they are immensely worthwhile.

Other reviewers have fleshed out the details, so I will simply comment that for the intellectually inclined, few films exist as pulpy as these hitherto out-of-reach plums that criterion has thankfully made available. To the oaf, these prunes are good for constipation.
My only criticism is that it would've been nice if criterion had gone all the way, releasing Rossellini's films of Socrates and Augustine in addition to these three, and just made the series more expensive. It would be worth it: they're both fabulous, full of cerebral throb (especially the one on Socrates, which contains condensed versions of the early Platonic dialogues that cover his last days, with references to other key dialogues) and IMPOSSIBLE to find in English!

The three films in this series ( The Age of the Medici, Cartesius, and Blaise Pascal) were part of Rossellini's effort to awaken the public through the television medium. He felt that the " mass media were accomplishing 'a sort of cretinization of adults.' Rather than illuminate people their great effort seemed to be to subjugate them,'to create slaves who think they are free'".

Certainly these films by Rossellini aren't everyone's cup of tea. Slow moving - yes. Lacking in action - yes.
They deal with ideas, ideas that helped create our modern world. The acting can be described as understated, but conveys the emotions of the characters. Rossellini felt that "art can make you understand through emotion what you are absolutely incapable of understanding through intellect." So though these films deal with ideas, we come to understand them through our heart.

Rossellini shows himself again to be a master film maker through these low budget, quickly filmed, made for television historical dramas. Once viewed they will not be easily forgotten.

Honestly, the title to this review tells all I have to say. So far, I've watched only the four-part "Age of the Medici" -- which is really only concerned with Cosimo dei Medici and with the society of Florence in his lifetime. One sees the signoria in action, the operations of banks and the labors of various artisans, and it's all quite educational though only at a newcomer level. The costumes are splendidly authentic, but the manner of wearing them is utterly stiff and unconvincing. However Cosimo and his peers conducted themselves, however they stood/bowed/spoke/frowned/smiled, I'm certain they maintained more "bella figura" and more animation than the actors in this historical pageant for TV. In fact, the only "natural" movement in the film is that of the horses, and by the by these actors don't ride especially gracefully. As I said, the costumes are vivid, but it seems rather unlikely that the walls of Florence, especially the exteriors, looked as weathered and dingy in the 15th C as they do in this film, even when they are obviously studio sets. Verisimilitude is a fickle goddess.

But I didn't watch these episodes as a history lesson. I wanted to freshen up my ability to hear spoken Italian and understand it, since I'll be spending a lot of time in Italy in 2012. My Italian has gotten foully corrupted by Spanish and French, ho ho. These films are perfect for that purpose! One can turn off the English subtitles, not always an option on Italian films distributed in North America. The accents are perfect 20th C classroom Italian, except for the use of "messere" instead of "signore". The actors speak with clarity and gravity, not very plausibly as passionate humans of the Renaissance but quite comprehensibly for a student of their modern language.

Roberto Rossellini belongs in the pantheon of great Italian film directors, but not for these stuffy episodes. His "history films" are for classrooms only, even if the classroom is your own living room.

At last! Here are the three greatest achievements from the final phase of Rossellini's career in good transfers and - where appropriate - with a choice of different languages on the soundtrack, in addition to the subtitles. Previous (overpriced) VHS issues of two of them were visually poor, and offered only the Italian soundtrack version of "Blaise Pascal" (the French is better) and the English version of "Age of the Medici" (the Italian is MUCH better!); and an earlier DVD issue of the third, "Cartesius", was excellent but not easily available.

That Rossellini spent his last decade or so making what might be called docu-dramas for TV is due to the tragically widespread misinterpretation and undervaluing of his work in the two decades before. There were always admirers - especially in France in the fifties - who understood and revered his work, but so many others failed to appreciate its subtlety, originality, beauty and complexity of attitude that the director lost faith in fictional cinema. The documentary aspect that had long been a feature of his work took over, and he set about creating a body of TV films that would focus on key moments in History. The three multi-episode series "Iron Age" (1964), "Man's struggle for survival" (1967) and "Acts of the Apostles" (1968) have rarely been shown outside of Italy - though screenings of a gratingly dubbed, awkwardly truncated print of "Acts of the Apostles" in London in 2007 revealed that it contains some great moments. But "The rise to power of Louis XIV" (1966) was released theatrically abroad and, despite occasional lapses into stolidity, the intelligence, lucidity and elegance of most of its scenes impressed many viewers. However, apart from a handful of effective sequences, "Socrates" (1970) and "Augustine of Hippo" (1972) seem disappointing, at times graceless, even clumsy.

Everything appears to click, though, for "Blaise Pascal" and "Age of the Medici" (both 1972) and "Cartesius" (ie. "Descartes" 1974), and they are complex, near-flawless masterpieces. The long takes, the refined but insidious camera movements and the placing of actors in the context of images that vivify both the splendour and the squalor of their historical periods are a wonder to behold. If "Blaise Pascal" is the most moving of the three, it is also dark and chilling: in Pierre Arditi's affecting performance the French philosopher comes across as a sympathetic but quietly anguished figure, using his superior intellect largely for the good of others but unable to emulate his sister Jacqueline's devout religious faith, or to come to terms with the suffering he sees all around. Though bleak, the final deathbed sequence, with its eerily graceful tracks and ominously slow zooms, is sublimely great art that cannot be reduced to a single, simple meaning. By contrast, "Cartesius" glows with the light of enquiry and discovery: time and again a servant enters a darkened bedroom where Descartes is sleeping late, throws open the curtains, and daylight floods in, so that the erudite clutter of the restless thinker's environment is revealed with Vermeer-like radiance.

"Age of the Medici" is chiefly concerned with the devious social, political and economic forces at work in 15th century Florence (and other Italian city states), but the human focal point, at first Cosimo de Medici (altruistic but ruthless) gradually becomes Leon Battista Alberti, portrayed as spokesman for the scientific and artistic underpinning of Renaissance humanism. Rossellini displays a franker admiration for Alberti than for any other historical figure in his films, which could be seen as a loss of "objectivity" - but it gives the final section of "Age of the Medici" a wonderful sense of uplift.