Roberto Rossellini goes back in history, with most of his neo-realist precepts packed for the trip: Francis and his followers are played by actual monks (and very amateurishly, it must be said), and there are no miracles, no heavenly visitations, no encouraging signs from above. The movie's strongest quality, for that matter, is its earthiness (when this doesn't bubble over into raucousness and vulgarity, as it especially does in a run-in with a band of barbarians who would have been better dealt with by Maciste, Mighty Son of Hercules). It isn't just that the view of the spiritual life is figuratively down-to-earth. Much beyond that, there is an almost tactile sense of the earth itself, and of all things on it, sparse though they are; and there is something magical and momentous about the comings and goings of people on the landscape. (1950) — Duncan Shepherd
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