The Taking of Power by Louis XIV

Filmmaking legend Roberto Rossellini brings his passion for realism and unerring eye for the everyday to this portrait of the early years of the reign of France’s “Sun King,” and in the process reinvents the costume drama. The death of chief minister Cardinal Mazarin, the construction of the palace at Versailles, the extravagant meals of the royal court: all are recounted with the same meticulous quotidian detail that Rossellini brought to his contemporary portraits of postwar Italy. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV dares to place a larger-than-life figure at the level of mere mortal.

Italy
1966
100 minutes
Color
1.33:1
French
Spine #456

Special Features

New, restored digital transfer
Taking Power, a multimedia essay by Tag Gallagher, author of The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini
Video interview with artistic advisor Jean Dominique de la Rochefoucauld and script supervisor Michelle Podroznik
Video interview with Renzo Rossellini
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Colin MacCabe

New cover by Sarah Habibi

DVD 1 Disc $23.96 SRP: $29.95

Special Features

New, restored digital transfer
Taking Power, a multimedia essay by Tag Gallagher, author of The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini
Video interview with artistic advisor Jean Dominique de la Rochefoucauld and script supervisor Michelle Podroznik
Video interview with Renzo Rossellini
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Colin MacCabe

New cover by Sarah Habibi

Cast & Credits

Cast

Jean-Marie Patte: Louis
Raymond Jourdan: Colbert
Silvagni: Cardinal Mazarin
Katharina Renn: Anne d’Autriche
Dominique Vincent: Madame du Plessis
Pierre Barrat: Fouquet
Fernand Fabre: Le Tellier
Françoise Ponty: Louise de la Vallière
Joelle Laugeois: Marie-Thérèse

Credits

Director: Roberto Rossellini
Written and adapted by: Philippe Erlanger
Written and adapted by: Jean Gruault
Photographed by: Georges Leclerc
Photographed by: Jean-Louis Picavet
Editing: Armand Ridel
Production design: Maurice Valay
Costumes: Christiane Coste

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Explore

Roberto Rossellini

Director

A founder of Italian neorealism, Roberto Rossellini brought to filmmaking a documentary-like authenticity and a philosophical stringency. After making films under Mussolini’s fascist regime early in his career, Rossellini broke out with Rome Open City, a shattering and vivid chronicle of the Nazi occupation of Italy’s capital, followed by Paisan and Germany Year Zero, which round out his “war trilogy.” Rossellini’s adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman led to the biggest controversy of his career (they were both condemned by the United States Senate) but also to another trilogy—Stromboli, Europa ’51, and Voyage to Italy, all starring Bergman and all about spiritual crises; they were dismissed at the time of their release but are widely praised now. Through the 1950s, Rossellini experimented with different forms, offering an ascetic religious film (The Flowers of St. Francis), a documentary about India (India), and a wartime melodrama that was one of his biggest hits (Il Generale Della Rovere). In the final phase of his career, after calling a news conference and announcing, “Cinema is dead,” Rossellini turned to historical television dramas about major subjects and figures (Louis XIV, Blaise Pascal, Descartes, the Medicis), made with a rational, almost scientific approach. As always, he yearned to show life’s minutiae unadorned, bare and pure. Echoes of Rossellini’s approach to filmmaking are still felt in movements around the world, from China to Iran to South America to the United States. It’s fair to say modern cinema wouldn’t exist as we know it without him.