This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 2, 2009 - Digging my way out of the DVD pile, one at a time:
Released by Criterion a few weeks ago, "The Rise to Power of Louis XIV" (1966) is widely regarded as the best of the historical films Roberto Rossellini directed in the 1960s and '70s, modest yet ambitious exercises in which the director applied some of the same techniques used in his neorealistic classics like "Open City," - unknown (and frequently nonprofessional) actors, natural settings and understated, almost plotless scenarios - to such historical figures as Socrates, Pascal, the Apostles and the Medicis.
(On the same day Criterion's released "The Rise to Power," its sister label Eclipse offered a box set of three additional Rossellini films from this period.)
The film begins at a time when members of the royal family were expected to lead idle lives, leaving the real business of running the country to their ministers and advisers. When one such figure, Cardinal Mazarin, dies, the reigning Prince, Louis XIV, a spoiled and indolent young man, causes a stir by announcing that he attends to assert his authority and take over as ruler. But his "rise," as Rossellini presents it, consists mainly of exaggerated displays of wealth, building the palace at Versailles and setting a trend for flamboyantly opulent clothing. (It helps that the actor playing Louis - not a professional - was so nervous that he read his parts from off-camera signs; his distraction actually comes off as a sense of aristocratic entitlement).
And while Rossellini has us first rooting for the pasty monarch's ability to assert himself, the film subtly shows how the new king's taste for extravagance turns into an increasingly ridiculous marriage of policy and self-indulgence.
Though we may admire the Sun King's independence, by the end of the film we see that his rise to power is a grand and shallow spectacle.
The Lens is the blog of Cinema St. Louis, hosted by the Beacon.