Release and Reception
The film premiered at the 1950 Venice Film Festival, where it was screened before a packed audience and often applauded in the middle of certain scenes. However, critics gave the film mostly poor reviews. Guido Aristarco said that it displayed a formalist and false reality. Pierre Laprohon said that "its most obvious fault is its lack of realism." Years after its release, Marcel Oms called it a "monument of stupidity." However, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther praised it. On its initial release, the movie earned less than $13,000 in Italy.
Pier Paolo Pasolini said that it was "among the most beautiful in Italian cinema" and Andrew Sarris ranked it eighth on his ten-best film list. Francois Truffaut called it "the most beautiful film in the world."
Although somewhat poorly received at the time, the film is now recognized as a classic of world cinema. It has been released on DVD by The Criterion Collection and Masters of Cinema.
In 1995 the Vatican listed the film as one of the forty-five greatest films ever made.
Read more about this topic: The Flowers Of St. Francis
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)