20.11.25, 20:30, La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV (1966)

In 1966, Roberto Rossellini directed La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV for French television. The film marked a radical change of direction in his career: a break with the neorealism that had made him famous, moving towards a form of cinemasaggio, or film essay, in which he opted for a didactic film language and distanced himself from more conventional narrative structures. For Rossellini, television offered a unique opportunity. ‘Modern society and modern art have completely destroyed man,’ he once said to André Bazin, ‘television helps us to rediscover man.’ From then on, Rossellini focused on the lives of key figures in history, each a symbol of profound changes in human thought and consciousness.

La Prise de Pouvoir depicts the quiet consolidation of absolute power after the death of Cardinal Mazarin and shows how Louis XIV emerged as the Sun King. The film eschews psychologising and instead opts for tableau-like compositions and long takes, in which the slow crystallisation of power becomes visible in gestures, rituals and spatial arrangements. It is a cinema of patience and distance, embodying the clarity and formal sobriety of Rossellini's late style.