Rossellini's Historical Films

The Criterion Collection once again proves its inestimable value and exquisite taste with an Eclipse boxed set of “Rossellini’s Historical Films: Renaissance and Enlightment.” Though made for tv broadcast and popular consumption, Rossellini’s late films seem esoteric and strange, until you fall under their spell and they become an acquired taste. The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, separately released by Criterion, is certainly the most approachable of those I’ve seen, but in this set the one that gripped my attention was Blaise Pascal (1972); it certainly had me taking down my old paperback of the Pensees and grazing through my old annotations. I liked when Pascal bested Descartes in disputation, but Rossellini went on to give fair play to the latter in Cartesius (1974), never a thinker I cottoned to but whose life was interesting to follow. I confess to fast-forwarding through parts of the three-episode Age of Cosimo de Medici (1973), though the third part, which focuses on Leon Batista Alberti, is consistently fascinating. First off, let’s grant that these films are long and slow, with lengthy bits of argument and exposition somewhat awkwardly declaimed, but their pageant-like quality, with devotion to scenic verisimilitude and patient reenactment, offers a wide window into the past. I eagerly anticipate another set that will include Socrates and The Messiah.

Speaking of esoteric, I won’t do much of a postmortem on my “Four Seasons in Japan” film series, but will note my pleasure in drawing a more than decent audience for such high-flown fare, and look forward to cultivating that audience in that time slot, with my Cinema Salon Film Club at the Clark starting in September. Of these four, Ugetsu was a bit of disappointment, most of the Mizoguchi images that stuck in my mind must have come from Sansho the Bailiff, but there are still more films of his I would be eager to see when they become available. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs certainly held up, on a second viewing within a relatively short period, and I tracked down another Naruse film, Late Chrysanthemums, which whets my appetite for more. A re-viewing of An Autumn Afternoon merely confirmed how much I love Ozu, certainly among my favorite directors. And Ran was a revelation -- turns out I had never seen it, just the start on an inadequate videotape -- proving that Kurosawa was a master to the end.