The Flowers of St. Francis

The Flowers of St. Francis is a 1950 film directed by Roberto Rossellini and co-written by Federico Fellini. The film is based on two books, the 14th-century novel Fioretti di San Francesco and La Vita di Frate Ginepro, both of which relate the life and work of St. Francis and the early Franciscans. I Fioretti is composed of 78 small chapters. The novel as a whole is less biographical and instead focuses on relating tales of the life of St. Francis and his followers. The movie follows the same premise, though rather than relating all 78 chapters, it focuses instead on nine of them. Each chapter is composed in the style of a parable and, like parables, contains a moral theme. Every new scene transitions with a chapter marker, a device that directly relates the film to the novel. On October 6, 1952, when the movie debuted in America, where the novel was much less known, the chapter markers were removed.

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Poster © the film's rights holders.