Roberto Rossellini was born on May 8, 1906, so the centennial of his birth is coming up. This showing had something to do with that. Isabella, who introduced it – that’s right! – told us that no Rossellini film has been seen on American television for twenty-five years, or something like that, and that in honor of the centennial, the Sundance Channel is going to show the following on May 8. I think.

First:

My Dad Is 100 Years Old (2005)
directed by Guy Maddin
written by Isabella Rossellini
16 min.

Quite an oddity. My sense that something heightened and unlikely was happening – namely, that I was watching a short film by Isabella Rossellini while she sat nearby with her bored-looking son – got a serious boost when I saw what the actual film was like: wacky. It’s a completely Isabellacentric memoir of her father with about equal emphasis on her personal recollections and on his artistic ideals and struggles. As she said, in introducing it, anyone could do a documentary about him; she wanted to do something that only she could do; hence: a movie that takes place in her mind. The technique is, um, Euro-whimsy. I.R. told us that her strongest memory of her father, as a little girl, was of his big belly as he lay in bed. So: Roberto Rossellini is portrayed as a giant, screen-filling belly, which jiggles in some sort of celestial fog while Isabella’s voice, modulated down to sound like god, rumbles his wisdom. Meanwhile, narrator-memoirist Isabella (in black turtleneck and jacket) wanders through a run-down movie theater where the specters of Fellini, Hitchcock, David O. Selznick, and Charlie Chaplin engage in stilted exchanges about the merits of realism, commercialism, art and whatnot. All are played by I.R. in variously bizarro caricatures. Eventually she shows up as Ingrid Bergman. We’ve all wanted to see her do that, right? Yeah, but oddly, dressing up as Ingrid Bergman only made Isabella Rossellini look much less like her than usual. The whole strange dream ends with Isabella in a void, caressing a giant sculpted landscape-like belly and expressing her love for her father and her sadness at his diminishing reputation.

What can we say to this? The whole time I was watching it, I felt pretty clearly that it was ridiculous. The elaborate poetic-cinematic aggrandizement of any individual person’s private feelings is a bad idea; the implication here that we should care about a visualization of this particular person’s feelings because her father was famous (or worse, because she herself is famous) was a little irritating. But all memoirs can be tricky that way; there’s a fine line between generously open and self-indulgent. For all that the scripting seemed artless and self-involved, I came away with the feeling that as a “love letter to her father,” the project had been entirely sincere, uncomplicated by any other sort of ego aspirations. And if the notion of a memoir-film is legitimate, why shouldn’t it be self-involved? Flamboyantly self-involved, even?

The look and feel, and probably the specifics of the writing too, were Guy Maddin’s doing. I haven’t seen The Saddest Music In the World yet, but I will. I’m hopeful but wary. From this little piece, I got the sense that his sorts of pseudo-antiquated stylistic quirks will tend to shut me out more than invite me in. Maybe that was my problem with this film in general – it was supposed to be this warm, human thing, but it was done as a weird magic-lantern show. I know, I know, it was all supposed to portray the sensation of fading memories. But a piece either exists inside the mysterious life of the mind or outside it, and seeing Isabella sitting in the midst of all that fog, looking so well-groomed and famous and talking directly to me about the artistic philosophy of Roberto Rossellini, pretty much answered that. I was kept well outside the poetic space where the visuals wanted to live. Maybe that tension was their joke, their vibe, but it didn’t gel for me.

But, you know, whatever. I was a little embarrassed, watching it, but there was no need. She’s obviously doing just fine, and this little movie is getting very warmly reviewed. So who was I embarrassed for? Whom, in fact?

Next came an actual Rossellini film, one that Isabella said was a personal favorite. After it started, she and her son slipped out of the room. So did several people I was with. But they shouldn’t have, because it was good.

It being:

Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950)
directed by Roberto Rossellini
screenplay by Federico Fellini, Father Antonio Lisandrini, and Father Félix Morión
story by Roberto Rossellini

The English title was The Flowers of St. Francis, though a literal translation of the Italian would have been Francis, God’s Jester. We watched this projected from the Criterion DVD that had just recently been released. This was and is the only Roberto Rossellini film I have yet seen.

Those people who want to explain why art films (European art films, usually) are worthier stuff than standard American fare tend to sketch the same outline: slower pace, less artifice, more interest in the human, more room for the lyrical and the profound, more ambiguity, greater resonance. We all know this list well; I’ve come to have a very clear sense of the slow, admirably humanistic “European art film” as an archetype. But until now I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever quite seen it. This was definitely it.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever quite seen it, because when I’d seen it before, it didn’t exactly do all those things it was supposed to do. Why is slow better? Why is ambiguity better? I don’t really buy this idea that real, humane human affairs are the ones with the soft pillows, or that the faster the car, the less soulful the driver. The word “humanistic” and its little cluster of connotations/implications seems to me a gang that could be broken up a bit. It’s become one of my stock disillusionments to realize that something is purporting to be “humanistic” in the sense that it relates to human universals, potentially to my own life, but is actually only “humanistic” in the sense that it is froofy.

But St. Francis was exactly that film you hear tell about, wherein the basic, traditional links between humanism as a way of thinking about life and humanism as an aesthetic approach shine through as essential and fundamental. Sure, I might want to break up that gang now because it’s gotten out of control*, but in the end I know there’s something down there that still makes sense, and there it was on the screen in front of me, playing out at that “leisurely pace” you hear so much about, and I understood what it was worth.

Analogously, this is a movie about the ways that religious devotion and goodness relate and connect. The connection is traditional, frequently overemphasized or misconstrued, and at bottom, real and important. The film is absolutely, unquestionably loving toward St. Francis and his followers (portrayed to great effect by non-actors), and, like them, toward all humanity that passes by, even the barbaric, the spiteful, and the annoyed. The whole of the world is presented with that certain grace of being a great gentle comedy, in the classical sense, which is how St. Francis sees it. And yet, with that attitude established beyond question, Rossellini’s portrait is more complicated. To what degree should we actually be emulating these lyrically, comically simple men of God? Not clear. We see their self-denial taken to unsympathetic extremes; what are we to make of it? Is their goodness of God or of themselves? Room is left for many possible interpretations.

The Italian title, “God’s Jester,” which I didn’t know while watching it, helps me a bit in clarifying – Francis and his followers are portrayed as divine innocents, not unlike clowns. Or Harpo. Francis himself is very slightly more knowing than his followers; one young guy is slightly less knowing than everyone else. They’re all pretty much absolute in their simplicity and dedication to simplicity. The sermon to the birds is, characteristically, played both as absurd and spiritual at once. Is devotion nonsense? Possibly, but we all know that nonsense has something divine in it. That’s basically what I took away from the film, but the film itself was bigger and bigger-hearted than that.

The movie breaks down into a series of titled vignettes, a format which very successfully evokes the world of the parable – depth in simplicity. Events are significant as they relate to philosophy but not to any narrative. The beauty of any given moment or idea is left to resonate in spiritual space rather than being tied to a structure of meaning. That sounds flaky but it’s just the way I expressed it. The loose structure works because of Rossellini’s dedication to his sort of realism, to a completely earthbound presentation. God only knows what he would have thought of Guy Maddin.

The biggest showpiece sequence somewhere in the middle of the film has the simplest of the brothers and some kind of hairy tyrant warrior brute confront one another. The tyrant stares down the monk, threatens him, makes enormous infuriated faces at him, but the monk does not flinch or vary his simple, mild smile. The tyrant is absolutely befuddled – what is this person and how can he be this way? In the absolute perfection of his bottomless simplicity, the existence of God is demonstrated, at least to this guilty conscience. The scene is reduced to a beautiful comic image, and the possible meaning of the image can extend in many directions – political, spiritual, philosophical. Rossellini (and Fellini) are not judging and despite what it might seem, they are not preaching. In this scene they present an image as fine and durable as any fairy tale or bible story.

I also found the scene with the leper particularly rich and affecting.

I can’t imagine a better Christian movie.

If that’s what it was.

* Business politics are one thing, but is the independent coffee house actually a better place to sit than Starbucks? Is the coffee better? Is your individuality better-loved there? And what Christmas tree should Charlie Brown have chosen?**

** I keep using the word “humanism” and talking about its connotations, but I’m actually only talking about it in the most generic, ahistoric sense, which is how I tend to think about most words. I realize that “Humanism” has meant several different distinct philosophical movements in several different eras, and right now tends to be used a lot as a partner to “secularism,” but, guess what, I don’t mean any of that stuff. Just the basic stuff about relating to human interests and values. Hm. I just looked it up and apparently the opposition to the supernatural is sort of the defining aspect of the word. So… I guess I won’t be using this word any more. What word did I mean, friendly readers? I want a word that just means “relating to human (rather than institutional or abstract) interests and values; based on a respect for aesthetic experience and the experience of the individual” but doesn’t actually oppose itself to religion. You know – like in The Flowers of St. Francis and also in A Charlie Brown Christmas.