Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Francis, God’s Jester)

Roberto Rossellini, 1950
It would be fair to say Rossellini made a film that was deliberately, visually, quite rough; beautiful, but with friction in the images, rejecting classical exact framings. The issue of space here is very interesting. We move between groups, speakers, who are separated. This separation is not done for SRS reasons (though it is SRS), but is a thematic choice, as shown by the seemingly deliberate lack of continuity in some of the back and forths. These, often high angles, mean our focus is on the image, that is the message, as we are forced to concentrate as we are (due to the non-continuity).
The story, as there is, of the film is fascinating. We have at the beginning and a little of the way in a voiceover, with subtitles the rest of the time, that pre-empt an action (though not the only action) of a scene, a practice obviously Brechtian, though it would be too simple to say Rossellini uses it for Brecht’s purposes. A parable structure? Not quite. Life is too complicated for that.
What we have are long episodes, the sections, broken down to lots of short actions in a contiguous space, following one another internally, but the episodes not really relating to each other otherwise. It would be fair to say this isn’t really narrative cinema, in any traditional way.
Rossellini works with the poles, to start with, of the ridiculous and of grace. But this is complicated. On one side we have the world of dirt, the rain and the mud. We have the ascetic stupidity, the petty organisation and world denial (politically, sensually) of the order, the pettiness (the dichotomy is really too simple to understand the complex; it is really a web rather than a dualism). We have idiocy, and what is key, the scene with the leper. The fools and the freaks, what St Francis could appear to the cynical viewer. The outcasts, the defamed. What they turn into, without losing their original character, is a kind of grace. Or at least a hope of salvation, represented of course in Francis. However much we hit, or test, they do not flinch, they come back. They are idiots. The understanding is that this cannot come without the dirt. Stuck in the metal armour (a remarkable, beautiful, itself clunky but also defamiliarising costume). There is undoubtedly also suggestions of a natural/ unnatural divide; the former contains the dirt and the truth.
For all these reasons, this film could be said to be simple, and it does have a simple/non-existent narrative, but it is not pious. In fact, whatever Rossellini may think, I wouldn’t call it simple; it shows truth, salvation, in its social and concrete complexity. In this way it differs from Bresson; the minimalist mis-en-scene, non-actors, and theme of salvation would otherwise conflate the two (there are parallels, but I would argue this is not Bressonian transcendence). This film is not pure, unless purity is always compromised, and dirty, caught in the mud and rain.