Cartesius

Roberto Rossellini on the set of Cartesius

Roberto Rossellini's Cartesius, a film he made for Italian television in 1974, shares the strengths and weaknesses of all the historical films he made for television after 1966. These films suffer from stiffness and didacticism, but I am sympathetic to Rossellini's intent because of the sheer volume of historical detail he manages to cram into these superficially modest efforts. Cartesius, a survey of the career of Rene Descartes, manages to touch upon the economic impact of New World exploration upon Europe, the Counter-Reformation, the plague, the the tulip craze, book burning, and the scientific breakthroughs of Harvey and Galileo. Despite its meagre budget, Rossellini paints a broad canvas tracing Descartes' peripatetic life which included stops in Paris, Breda, Leiden, Ulm, Poitiers, Amsterdam, Franeker, and, finally, Stockholm. Whew.

Rossellini pictures Descartes intellectual wanderlust as a reaction against his cloistered and cosseted youth spent receiving instruction from the Jesuits. Ugo Cardea, who had collaborated with Rossellini on The Age of the Medici, portrays well Descartes' restless spirit of rational inquiry, but also his brusque and pompous manner. In his historical films like Cartesius, Rossellini unblinkingly exalts humanistic heroes who attempted to spread enlightenment and vanquish superstition and ignorance.