Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950)

Without worrying too much about the historical plausibility of his staging, Rossellini films the episodes traditionally recounted about the life of Saint Francis and his disciples, played here by actual friars from the convent of Maiori. One could even say that Francis is not really the protagonist of “his” film, so overshadowed is he by the presence of the ingenuous Friar Ginepro, who, together with the elderly Giovanni the Simple, forms a pair that fits the film’s premise. Rossellini’s message is a celebration of holiness—not at all hieratic holiness, but one based on the folly of behaving like a child, like an element of nature, ultimately scandalizing those who uphold conventional morality. Friar Ginepro gives his own habit to a poor man and returns to the convent naked. When Francis forbids him to give away his habit, Ginepro, so as not to disobey, suggests that the next poor man steal it from him. In the episode involving the tyrant Nicolaio, the little friar lets the soldiers torment him; when the mercenary captain asks what Francis’s followers want and Ginepro speaks of humility and poverty, one of the tyrant’s advisers says, “I don’t understand this way of speaking.”