Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This movie was a cult favourite in a repertory movie house in Montreal in the 70s. I understood why when I saw it on DVD format.As we know Franco Zeffirelli, he did great with either Shakespeare flicks (Romeo and Juliet among others) or Jesus of Nazareth, nor he did not so with Endless Love.This time he succeeded with the rendering of Francis of Assisi's life.Back from the war, wounded emotionally, Francisco found peace by seeing a lark on the roof, and rejecting the luxuries of his father's business. He abandoned all this to a life of poverty and sacrifice, rebuilding a sanctuary with some friends who joined him on the way, including Clare, a former love interest of his. However, the higher clergy jealousy takes over him and his new order, Francis must ask for forgiveness to the leader of Christianity: Pope Innocent III.With songs by Donovan and strong interpretation, beautiful photography and well written script, this is one of the best Christian stories ever told.Now I understood why it was such a cult favourite.

A narcissistic portrayal of St. Francis' enlightenment and fully equipped with a melancholiac rural beauty of the nature, the ramifications are generally benign, albeit for recreation only.Structurally this is a prequel of Rossellini's THE FLOWER OF ST. FRANCIS (Francesco, giullare di Dio 1950), divided rightly by the before/after of Francis' pilgrimage towards Rome, at once with radically opposed visual punches, a perfect set for a double-feature, color Vs. black and white, lavish versus austere.The nearly non-Italian cast (excludes Valentina Cortese) is dubbed with Italian in the version I watched yesterday, it inevitably thwarted the fluency of the film, which, as a matter of fact, could be mostly paid no heed to as the performances are ludicrously overblown, particularly Graham Faulkner's Francis, Zeffirelli's personal preference triumphs in this film in every respect, the unrealistic beauty of St. Francis and his apostles is to meet the eyes only! Alec Guiness did an unanticipated role as the Pope Innocent III in the rear part of the film, where the setting in Rome evokes the similar tableaux in the ever-famous Chinese Monkey King story when he encounter the emperor of all-gods in his palace (the west-east correlation is unbelievably tangible!).So, personally I cannot endure the over-dramatic enactment of this biographic film, however the narrative clings closely to the story itself, while the cinematography of the bucolic Assisi is captivating enough to engross me attentively, yet my deepest sympathy is that the epiphany which I expected had never arrived.

Vastly superior to "Francis of Assisi," a movie which is as dry as dust. I watched the two movies one after the other with my Catholic mother-in-law, and she strongly preferred "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" to "Francis of Assisi." This film conveys real emotion and reminds us that those who feel called by God are different from most workaday folk. For those of you who have a strong aversion to the sight of the human body, be advised that there is a nude scene in "Brother Sun, Sister Moon." It has symbolic significance and is quite beautiful. Some reviewers on the internet thought the Francis and Clare characters seemed stoned. I did not see it that way at all. To me, they were conscious of being illuminated by the Holy Spirit. In other words, they were atypical and in a tiny minority of humans on earth; of course they're not going to act like your next-door neighbor or some concocted role model from a religious textbook. The acting is competent without being great. The soundtrack is written and performed by Donovan - think "Atlantis," "Jennifer Juniper," and "Hurdy Gurdy Man" - so you will either like or dislike the soundtrack because of this, depending on your musical taste. For those who strongly dislike the culture of the late 60s and early 70s, you may not like this film, because it was made in the early 70s and evokes the tone and feel of that period.

For this bubblegum biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, director Franco Zeffirelli wears his heart on his sleeve, but his head is full of flowers, butterflies and birdsong, enough to turn even the most stubborn romantic into a hardened cynic. Pandering shamelessly to the wide-eyed innocence of an audience just then learning how to make love and not war, Zeffirelli presents the young Saint-to-be, somewhat anachronistically, as the world's first counter-culture dropout. In the same late '60s spirit most of the film leans toward unforgivably trite platitudes: witness the ludicrous scene between Francis and a tearful Pope Innocent III, played by Alec Guinness like he was anticipating his future role as Obi Wan Kenobi. Fortunately the director's eye for imagery is stronger than his ear for dialogue (or music: nothing dates the film more than the Donovan guitar ballads on the soundtrack). The best antidote for anyone watching the film at home would be to simply mute the volume and enjoy the scenery.