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The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

The Criterion Collection

Pierre Barrat (Actor), Maurice Barrier (Actor) Rated:

Format: DVD

23 ratings

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Filmmaking legend Roberto Rossellini brings his passion for realism and unerring eye for the everyday to this portrait of the early years of the reign of France s Sun King, and in the process reinvents the costume drama. The death of chief minister Cardinal Mazarin, the construction of the palace at Versailles, the extravagant meals of the royal court: all are recounted with the same meticulous quotidian detail that Rossellini brought to his contemporary portraits of postwar Italy. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV dares to place a larger-than-life figure at the level of mere mortal.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored digital transfer
Taking Power, a multimedia essay by Tag Gallagher, author of The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini
The Last Utopia, a documentary about Rossellini s late career
Video interview with artistic advisor Jean Dominique de la Rochefoucauld and script supervisor Michelle Podroznik
Video interview with Renzo Rossellini
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A new essay by critic Colin McCabe

Review

Essential cinema. --Jonathan Rosenbaum

Unrivaled lucidity and honesty...a new moral cinema of history. --Time Out

Product details

Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.33:1
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 3.82 Ounces
Item model number ‏ : ‎ CRRN1787DVD
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Multiple Formats, Color, NTSC, Subtitled
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 40 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ January 13, 2009
Actors ‏ : ‎ Pierre Barrat, Maurice Barrier, François Bernard, André Dumas, Raymond Jourdan
Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
Language ‏ : ‎ Unqualified
Studio ‏ : ‎ Criterion Collection
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001ILTUKG
Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

Best Sellers Rank: #108,540 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #2,530 in Foreign Films (Movies & TV)
- #10,955 in Kids & Family DVDs
- #22,495 in Drama DVDs

Customer Reviews:
23 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		32%
4 star		9%
3 star		49%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		10%

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Top reviews from the United States

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EDL

Boy this is a treat...

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2009

Verified Purchase

I first caught this film at MOMA in New York sometime in the 1980's (under the title "The Rise of Louis XIV") and again at a packed revival house seven or eight years later. If you are reading this you know that Rossellini was one of the genuine grand masters of cinema. See it if you have the opportunity (even with a cast full of amateurs). This is right up there with masterpieces like "Open City", "Voyage to Italy" and the Italian language version of "Stromboli". It does not deliver the kind of emotional body blow those pictures supply but it does provide a deeply satisfying intellectual experience that will open the door to seeing the world in a somewhat different way. Buy it or just take it out of the library or netflix and watch it if you are a believer. It's that good and chances are that you will feel compelled to talk about it with friends.
Now,if we can only get decent Criterion versions of "Open City" and "Voyage to Italy" ...

5 people found this helpful

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Michael Cohen

profound cryptic anti cinema

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2014

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You may have only heard of rosselini's neo realist or Bergman films but this is just as good

There's a mechanical anti/art quality to the films style that's somewhat radical. It's almost as if the marquise de Sade decided to make a Marxist history film

Well perhaps that doesn't sound super enticing but the film is very important piece of cinema and rossslini's greatest late period work

2 people found this helpful

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Mishele

King Louis clumps about like a troll - ballet history is trommeled!

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2013

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For fleshing out some dry history, this film is good - you can see what they might have worn, how they addressed each other, what their court looked like; however, I wonder if the movement was authentic. This time period is intriguing to me, because I am a dance historian and the beginnings of ballet as we know it are credited to Louis XIV. In the film, Louis, who is widely reported to have been an excellent dancer, clumps about like a troll from under a bridge. If he moved no better than this stiff actor, then much of ballet history needs to be re-written! The film itself is slow, slow, slow and tedious to watch. I credit the director for taking on this topic, but I'm not sure this was his most compelling film. I hope not, anyway.

3 people found this helpful

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Educational

A monument in the history of television

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2013

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The absolute masterpiece of all Rossellini's television works. The amazing climax of his prophetical "pedagogical revolution of the television industry".

3 people found this helpful

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A. Ferreira

Great!

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2009

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I realy love history, this movie is just fantastic for everyone to understand how things happened in that time...

One person found this helpful

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Written Word

Quelle misere!

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2013

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Who knew a movie about the Sun King Louis XIV could be so boring! Insipid dialogue, stilted acting, costumes that look like they were made by the mothers of Louis' kindergarden class, long, slow shots of Louis eating like a pig,,,, Avoid this one like the plague - if you want to learn something about Louis XIV do just about anything other than buy this movie - it immediately went into the pile for donation.... quelle tristesse....

One person found this helpful

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Agustin M. Martin

the taking of power by louis XIV

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2009

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Very interesting. I enjoy reading or viewing the histories of the past about European countries ansd the monarchy. I really enjoyed this one.

3 people found this helpful

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Grigory's Girl

Fascinating, difficult, intellectual, dry, immensely watchable...

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2009

This was one of Rossellini's first TV films, shot for French TV near the end of his career. Rossellini has been the least of my favorite filmmakers from Italy, not because he isn't talented, but I just never got into his films like I did the other famous Italian filmmakers. But after having viewed this film (and his subsequent TV work), I respect him much more, and these later films are my favorites of his work.

This film, shot for French television, is a cousin to Rossellini's historical films of the Enlightenment (The Age of Medici, Cartesius, and Blaise Pascal). This may be the best out of all four of those films. It's the most visually opulent of the four films, with stunning costumes and set design, and photographically it's beautiful. That's quite astounding considering it was shot on 16mm film, which doesn't age very well. Kudos to Criterion for restoring it well. While the performances in the Italian TV films were mostly perfunctory, in this film they are livelier and more interesting. It could be because Rossellini was working with direct sound (something he never did in his Italian films), and the performances are enriched because of that. Jean Marie Patte, who plays the king, is stiff at times, obviously reading from cue cards in a few scenes. Rossellini gave his actors their lines just before they shot, and had cue cards on the set if they couldn't remember, so it's not all Jean Marie's fault. It's a bit distracting, but it doesn't detract too much from the overall experience of the film.

There are some striking scenes in the film, one near the end film in a garden, and when a key rival of Louis is arrested. The courtoom intrigue is absolutely fascinating. There are also surprising parallels between today's world and the world inherited by Louis XIV. It's also fascinating to see Louis mature from a shy, spoiled, hedonisitic person to a mature, solid, and shrewd politican/king.
It's also unnerving to see doctors at the beginning of the film tend to Mazarin who leaves his fortune to Louis (the doctors, learned men of their time, bleed Mazarin in hopes of healing him. They also smell his chamber pot). The film is very dry, talky, and intellectual, so if you're expecting an HBO series that's occasionally historically accurate but shows gratuitous sex just because they can, you should skip this (even though they are funny scenes in the film dealing with sex). If you adjust to the rhythms and sensibility of The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, it's absolutely fascinating stuff.

20 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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hing tsang

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

Great film from a neglected period in the filmmaker's career

Dominique L'Abbé

VHS

Reviewed in Canada on August 25, 2019

Verified Purchase

Excellente!

Daniel Bergeron

Intrusion différente à l'histoire de Versailles

Reviewed in Canada on March 10, 2010

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Pour un amateur de l'histoire de Louis XIV, ce DVD, qui n'est pas un chef d'oeuvre pour sa présentation mais, un produit à voir pour son contenu, permet une vision différente aux amateurs de Versailles et du Roi-Soleil...

Ne pas vous surprendre de la piètre qualité du jeu...

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