← The Flowers of St. Francis
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The Flowers of St. Francis · reception & legacy

1950 · Roberto Rossellini

How The Flowers of St. Francis has been received, argued over, and remembered.

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 favourite: 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.