Sightlines · reception
How The Flowers of St. Francis was received
1950 · Roberto Rossellini · The Flowers of St. Francis on Sightlines
The arc
Dismissed by many Italian critics in 1950 as a slight, naive detour after Rossellini's war trilogy, it was later championed by Truffaut and Pasolini and is now widely ranked among Rossellini's greatest films.
What’s debated
The perennial split: is its simplicity profound or just simple — and do you need faith to love it, with devout and secular cinephiles each claiming it as theirs?
Its footprint
A touchstone of spiritual cinema — it made the Vatican's 1995 list of 45 great films, and Martin Scorsese lovingly showcased it in My Voyage to Italy as essential Rossellini.
Where it stands
A canon climber turned quiet cinephile favorite: the Criterion-approved 'holy fool' movie that gets recommended as the gentlest, funniest entry point into neorealism.
Did you know? The friars are played by real Franciscan monks, non-professionals acting under Rossellini's direction; the script was co-written by a young Federico Fellini, and comedian Aldo Fabrizi (of Rome, Open City) is essentially the only professional actor in the cast.