The first and best-known is The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (1966) which has been released by Criterion as a stand-alone disc. A selection of three other TV films set during roughly the same historical era appears in a collection from their Eclipse sub-label called Rossellini's History Films: Renaissance And Enlightenment. One thing is certain - these aren't your typical action-packed, tightly narrated historical melodramas. In fact, as part of his relentless experimentation with story-telling techniques Rossellini developed a distanced, leisurely style that could easily put off viewers expecting either a more conventional story or at least an easily digested history lesson. (It's hard not to wonder if Straub-Huillet had seen The Taking of Power before embarking on their similar rethinking of historical film The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach in 1968.)
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV (previously known in English under the less accurate translation The Rise to Power of Louis XIV) focuses on how a pleasure-driven, somewhat frivolous young man reorganized and consolidated a financially troubled, weak monarchy into an absolutist regime controlling a firm hierarchy. Louis XIV, later known as the Sun King, not only developed his own form of behind-the-scenes hardball manueuvering but took age-old ideas of political control through manipulating images to a new extreme, using everything from architecture and writing to fashion and coinage. (Perhaps not much of a revelation to early 21st century viewers who for the most part understand this better than any other type of politics.) Viewers unfamiliar with French history might have a few stumbling blocks--the Fronde for instance isn't explained--but these are really fairly minor since the main points will be more than clear.
Rossellini at times presents Louis XIV's transformation with talky discussions of what is happening or about to happen, usually elsewhere than what we're seeing on the screen. That these sections aren't irredeemably tedious is a testament to his feel for characters and almost painterly compositions that frame them among day-to-day settings and contemporary bric-a-brac like Renaissance paintings. (The sharp DVD transfer, while revealing some flaws in the original source, is a great help here.) But part of Rossellini's strategy is to leave viewers free to adopt a more critical view of what the characters say, which is sometimes self-interested or biased. When Louis' mother takes him to task for the openness of his activity with his mistress is she concerned for her son or the monarchy? Is she trying to manipulate him or just being motherly? In this Rossellini almost created his own version of Bertolt Brecht's alienation theories which sought that same end of thinking about characters and their actions rather than merely accepting them.
At other times Rossellini adopts what could be described as an ethnographic approach, where instead of visiting some out-of-the-way tribe he returned from the past with documents of ways different from ours. Two long sequences that show Louis and his queen rising in the morning and a later one where he eats dinner are studies in unfamiliar and arcane ritual. To us most of these parts will seem quite peculiar and though there are a couple of explanatory comments from a passing nobleman we're usually left on our own to marvel or condemn or just shake our heads trying to figure out what they're up to. In these scenes or another focusing on a stag hunt Rossellini shows an audience within the film (the court's nobility) who while mostly silent provide emphasis on Louis' control of imagery as much as his submission to custom. In an odd aside Louis entrusts one critical task to a soldier named D'Artagnan, apparently a reference in this otherwise austere film to Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (the final of the three novels in the series is set during Louis XIV's rise to power).
One helpful extra on the DVD is a 24-minute "multimedia essay" by Rossellini biographer Tag Gallagher. The essay is basically clips from the film, behind-the-scenes shots and other Rossellini work while Gallagher talks. His reading of The Taking of Power may not be completely convincing but he does explore how Rossellini created his effects by using a non-actor in the lead role, direct sound, character movement and set lighting and then places the film in the context of his career. There's also a short interview with Rossellini's son and a longer one with the historical advisor and the script supervisor that are well worth watching.
For more information about The Taking of Power, visit The Criterion Collection. To order The Taking of Power, go to TCM Shopping.
by Lang Thompson
