The Rise of Louis XIV
1966 ‘La Prise de Pouvoir Par Louis XIV’ Directed by Roberto Rossellini
Synopsis
Cardinal Mazarin dies, leaving a power vacuum in which the young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, the Superintendant who has been systematically looting the treasury and wants to be prime minister. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand by offering a bribe to Louis' mistress to be his ally. She reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt, the urban poor working and fed, and peasants untaxed. Years later, in a coda, we see Louis exercizing the power of the sun.
Popular reviews
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Movie #17 in my Journey Towards Entry-Level Cinephilia
The Rise of Louis XIV is an interesting film. Roberto Rossellini directed it as a TV movie and utilized non-actors. While the story is interesting at times, its limitations can be felt.
As a made for TV movie, this film's budget is one of its biggest limitation. However Rossellini uses this low budget to make one of the most interesting choices of this movies. Rather that building the world of Louis XIV as pristine and new, he makes everything worn and dirty. In an odd way this really humanized Louis as it made him feel human rather than larger than life.
The use of non-actors really added to this film as well.…
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A world where the nobility festers in unwashed clothes, sweat and unemptied chamber pots even as a king plots to consolidate power through a prison of vanity. The background for this chapter of Louis XIV ascension from the babying shadows of his advisers and regents was a series of civil wars brought on by a chafing aristocracy. Yet Rossellini, armed with a zoom-lens and unpretentious non-actors, slowly casts the Sun King's devious use of fashion and favors to centralize power as the equal of the most complex military strategy. The nervousness of the office clerk who plays a monarch translates as cool aloofness, and his monotone reading of lines held off-camera for his aid gives Louis' words the power of…
Recent reviews
More-
Movie #17 in my Journey Towards Entry-Level Cinephilia
The Rise of Louis XIV is an interesting film. Roberto Rossellini directed it as a TV movie and utilized non-actors. While the story is interesting at times, its limitations can be felt.
As a made for TV movie, this film's budget is one of its biggest limitation. However Rossellini uses this low budget to make one of the most interesting choices of this movies. Rather that building the world of Louis XIV as pristine and new, he makes everything worn and dirty. In an odd way this really humanized Louis as it made him feel human rather than larger than life.
The use of non-actors really added to this film as well.…
-
A world where the nobility festers in unwashed clothes, sweat and unemptied chamber pots even as a king plots to consolidate power through a prison of vanity. The background for this chapter of Louis XIV ascension from the babying shadows of his advisers and regents was a series of civil wars brought on by a chafing aristocracy. Yet Rossellini, armed with a zoom-lens and unpretentious non-actors, slowly casts the Sun King's devious use of fashion and favors to centralize power as the equal of the most complex military strategy. The nervousness of the office clerk who plays a monarch translates as cool aloofness, and his monotone reading of lines held off-camera for his aid gives Louis' words the power of…
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Why would this film be more important than school textbooks on French history? Because, it is 100% relevant to "today" in the most visceral and direct way possible. The rule to govern yourself, while governing others, is to indulge yourself. Fashion and food, temptations and sex. All is wonderful if they are controlled by one who is apt.
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I appreciate the film as somewhere between a museum walk and textbook, though the film possesses a muted sense of cinematic spectacle due to the lavishness. I've never made this distinction before but it might be useful to distinguish between the cinematic tradition of escapism which fetishizes precision and control as exemplified by set design (a practice I think John Berger would shake his head at) and the filmic traditions which might be subdivided into documentation without intrusion and documentation of emulsion and light. Rossellini is a peculiar kind of escapist but he is one, and at this stage in his career I think Rossellini put most of his effort into set design which would animate the screen by virtue…
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If I remember right Rossellini did a series of historical films for television, for the simple reason that he thought television was terrible and that he could do better. This is the only one I've seen and it's simultaneously compelling and boring, if that makes any sense. Although history is compressed into a dozen or so scenes, each scene does in fact seem to convey the necessary steps taken by Louis XIV towards the absolutism of his progeny. The best part about it is the lack of gratuitous drama found in most historical films, going right back to the beginning of film. But I don't know there's an awful lot to say about it. About as un-Rossellini-esque as possible.
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Interesting idea but does not fully work. Too much like stage and TV and not enough cinema.
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Rossellini's approach to history is spellbinding, capturing the everyday with the pivotal and profound with grace and perfection. He perfectly sums up why Louis XIV was an interesting leader without spelling it out via dramatic contrivance.