Francesco d'Assisi

Francis’s first years go from the childhood games with friends, to real battlefields, but he can’t find an actual commitment in his life. Reading the Gospel, in the abandoned church of San Damiano, leads Francis to embrace poverty, giving up all of his father’s goods. His choice scandalises everyone and his father takes him to trial for dissipation. After this decision, Francesco is permeated by a deep joy and with a small community of observants, he goes to Rome to see Pope Innocent III, to ask him to approve the Franciscan order. Once he gets the approval, the friars can start to preach and the Franciscan family grows bigger. But there are the first disagreements. Francis goes to Assisi, to write the new order, completely based on the Gospel. It will then be changed by some friars because it was too strict. Francis is disappointed and embittered. He gets seriously ill and almost blind, so he leaves to La Verna. He dies on the 4th of October of 1296, naked on the bare ground.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

I made the film about Saint Francis despite myself. I didn’t have any Catholic education and I wasn’t really into the story. But I read Sabatier’s book, which makes Francis a boy of every time, mine as well, and that was interesting. That is why they said it was a film on the first protester. That’s how I felt it. And that is also how the Italian government felt it, the screening of the film needed to be approved by the Parliament. I don’t believe there are divisions between spirit and matter. I didn’t make the film with a religious feeling, but it wasn’t hard to respect the first hippy of history.
Lou Castel, who in 1965 was unknown, had fallen in love so deeply with the character that he completely identified with him. From that moment his rebel nature came out and he gave all his money to an extra-parliamentary party, when he could have become rich thanks to his talent. He became stateless, now he doesn’t shoot much and it often happens to be abroad. I wanted someone unknown to play the role of Francis. Although I knew Marco Bellocchio very well (we both attended the Experimental Centre of Cinematography in Rome), who has a small part in the film (the part of the friar who fixes the roof with Francis), I didn’t know about I pugni in tasca, which was going through the editing phase at the time. I met Lou Castel somewhere else and as soon as I saw him I knew it was born to be Francis, but not the one of the Italian imagination. Lou Castel and I worked together on Francesco d’Assisi.
We used to leave the script at the hotel and we shot the episodes of Saint Francis’ life guided by the inspiration. And Lou Castel was becoming Francis.
In the scene where the friars gather, when the community is bigger and Francis doesn’t know what to say, it was Lou Castel to shout: “I don’t want to come, I am not a boss”. Because in his life, he is not a boss, he is a mystic. All the people who worked on the project were so confused between the two “lives” that in the scene of the preaching, where Francis takes off his clothes in the church, the background actors and the inhabitants instead of saying: “Who do you think you are, Francis” shouted “Who do you think you are, Lou”.
I never gave Lou Castel any indication, I only provoked him. Francesco d’Assisi is a happening. The camera only recorded reality, a reality that is out of time, which was overcoming us. All of this without a theory behind it: when you are young, you have clarity. The other friars, apart from Castel and Cucciolla, were performed by non professional actors. I went around Umbria and I took them from there, from Francis’ land, but in the countryside. Not from the touristic places dedicated to him. Franco Zeffirelli made me laugh when he went to shoot there, because he used those touristic places of “pilgrimage to Saint Francis” with all the most popular buildings.

Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala

Director: Liliana Cavani.
Soggetto e sceneggiatura: Tullio Pinelli, Liliana Cavani.
Director of photography: Giuseppe Ruzzolini.
Scenografia e costumi: Ezio Frigerio.
Editor: Luciano Gigante.
Music: Peppino De Luca.
Consulenza storica: Boris Ulianich.
Cast and characters: Lou Castel (Francesco), Mino Bellei (Bernardo), Marco Bellocchio (frate Pietro di Stacia), Riccardo Bernardini (frate Silvestro), Ken Belton (papa Innocenzo III), Giuseppe Campodifiori (frate Giovanni), Edoardo Cicogna (frate Egidio), Riccardo Cucciolla (frate Leone), Roberto Di Massimo (Guido), Erig Domain (il vescovo di Assisi), Marcello Formica (il capitano di ventura), Giampiero Frondini (Cattani), Gerard Herter (frate Elia da Cortona), Ludmilla Lvova (Chiara), Grazia Marescalchi (Pica, madre di Francesco), Oscar Mercurelli (frate Angelo), Franco Marchesi (frate Corrado), Giancarlo Sbragia (Pietro, padre di Francesco), Maurizio Tocchi (frate Masseo), Gianni Turillazzi (Rufino).
Production company: Clodio Cinematografica, per la RAI.
Italian distribution: indipendente regionale.