The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

It's no exaggeration to call Roberto Rossellini the most influential European director of the 20th century. His reputation rests mainly on a trilogy of films made in the immediate aftermath of World War Two -- Rome Open City, Paisà and Germany Year Zero. These were pioneering efforts of neorealist cinema using non-actors in real locations. Rossellini has inspired everyone from the directors of the French New Wave to American heavyweights like Martin Scorsese. Rossellini had a checkered career and made headlines as much for his personal life as artistic efforts, especially his affair and later marriage to Ingrid Bergman. By the 1960s Rossellini had become fed up with the politics and financial frustrations of studio filmmaking. Film Professor Colin MacCabe -- writing for the Criterion Collection -- describes the surprising turning point in Rossellini's career.

In 1962, Roberto Rossellini called a press conference in a bookshop in Rome and announced that the cinema was dead. "There's a crisis not just in film but culture as a whole," he explained. Increasingly, Rossellini had understood the great task of film as education, but he had been unable to find anyone in the cinema to share his passion. So, he said, "I intend to retire from film and dedicate myself to television, in order to be able to reexamine everything from the beginning in full liberty, in order to rerun mankind's path in search of truth." (Colin MacCabe, ...Long Live The Cinema!)

This was no publicity stunt, and for the rest of his fifteen years on earth Rossellini created dozens of hours of low-budget historical films for television, including biopics of St. Augustine and Blaise Pascal. Many of these have yet to be made available to American viewers, but Criterion has just released The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV) which Rossellini made for French television. It's one of the oddest motion pictures I've ever seen, an experience akin to watching paint dry, but strangely fascinating. The dialogue is delivered in monotones by mostly non-professional actors. The film tells an extraordinary story in an extraordinarily prosaic way. The story of how a playboy prince -- dominated by his mother and disrespected by the nobility -- metamorphosed into the godlike Sun King of Versaille, and created an absolute monarchy that lasted until the mobs and the guillotine ended it in bloodbath a century later.

Louis is acted (if one can call this acting) by Jean-Marie Patte, certainly one of the homeliest young men to ever play such a starring role. The office worker Patte was nervous in front of the camera, and unable to learn his lines. Rossellini improvised a solution of having crew members situated around the set holding boards with his lines written on them. The fact that Patte is always looking past his fellow actors -- his eyes searching for the next tote board -- makes the performance all the more effective. Rossellini focuses inordinately on the small details of 17th century court life -- the clothes, the food, the bodily functions. This is a microscopic look at the mundane, which Rossellini believed held the key to unlocking a better understanding of our common human experience. This is what he meant by reexamining everything from the beginning. MacCabe: "These incidental details, it can be argued, form the real subject matter of all of Rossellini's history films...Rossellini is fascinated by the material reality of previous cultures, which film is uniquely able to render for a contemporary audience." Those hardcore film buffs with the required patience may find The Taking of Power a uniquely rewarding experience. I say may. It took me several sittings to get through it, but I'm anxious to watch it again. A big "merci" to Criterion for making it available!

Jean-Marie Patte (right) reading his lines