La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV

When Italian Neo-Realism began (the 1946 release of Rossellini's Rome, Open City is as good a starting point as any), it aimed to bring some of the techniques of documentary film-making to feature films. Its practitioners had the advantage of working during some of the most dramatic upheavals of the century, but the influence of their innovation continued into peacetime and up to the present day. Making a neo-realist film about the end of WW2 at the end of WW2 is one thing; making a neo-realist film about Louis XIV in 1966 is quite another. La Prise de Pouvoir... is one of many historical features that Rossellini made for television from the mid-6os until his death in 1977, and one of the few that also received a cinema release. He aims for a broadly realistic style, and uses many of the documentary techniques he favoured earlier in his career.

The film does have more of an affiliation with the out-and-out realism of Rome,Open City than might at first appear, for while the time is obviously different, many of the locations are genuine, and relatively unchanged from the time of the Sun-King. As an interesting attempt to give the costume drama an authenticity unattainable in a studio, La Prise de Pouvoir... is like Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon in intention if not technique. A rarely seen film from a key European directon.

Review by Andrew Abbott
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95