Word: zeffirelli
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...FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI has fallen victim to the youth movement. In an attempt to tell the story of St. Francis of Assisi as a medieval eccentiric. Zeffirelli runs the risk of presenting the saint as a progenitor of Woodstock nation. His film succeeds in tracing a parallel between then and now, and thereby fails to become an acceptable work of art. At a time when hard-boiled movies are derigeur, a film on a religious theme can appear embarrassingly sentimental. Zeffirelli's has personal interpretation of the St. Francis legend does just that. And at a time when "Godspell" has recently...
...life; his return from the war between Assisi and the rival town of Perugia, his subsequent illness and conversion, the rebuilding of the ruined church of San Damiano, and his trip to Rome to seek advice from Pope Innocent III. Given this limited time-span and the painstaking efforts Zeffirelli makes to focus on the reasons for Francis's conduct, he explains astonishingly little of what was happening in twelfth-century Italy, both according to historical fact and to his own fiction. The war could be any war. A vehicle for top-heavy symbolism, it serves the purpose of contrasting...
...many religious paintings, Francis strips himself before the bishop and the townfolk, and hands back to his father his clothes, his earthly possessions and his name. Striding to the city gates, he stands outlined against the sky outside, his naked body reminiscent of the last human nudity Zeffirelli celebrated, the joyous body of Romeo. But his Romeo arose from a bed of love to face a world of tragedy; his Francis rushes off in a return to nature that is too starry-eyed to be believed...
...Zeffirelli's adoration of the Umbrain country-side is understandable, but the voice of British pop star Donovan singing limp lyrics as Francis romps his way through masses of poppies and fields of grain turns the story into a musical tour de farce. St. Francis's own documented hymns to his "brother sun and sister moon" bespeak a pious, almost pagan Christianity, inspired by the ballads of the troubadours he heard throughout his youth. Donovan's tunes tinkle with the stilted sounds of AM radio...
...Franciscans, killing one of the brothers. St. Francis and his friends promptly go to Rome, where they plead their case before Pope Innocent III (Alec Guinness). The Pope is moved by their presence to ruminate aloud: "In our obsession with original sin, we forget about original grace." Zeffirelli apparently has forgotten about both...