Mickey Rourke & St. Francis
When I heard that The Wrestler (featuring Mickey Rourke as the eponymous lead) had just come out on DVD, it triggered a memory. An Italian friend of mine had urged me to see the 1989 film by Liliana Cavani called Francesco. And yes, it stars Rourke as…St. Francis (and Helena Bonham Carter as Clare).
I had put Francesco in my Netflix queue but had postponed watching it for months. I was pretty sure that it would be awful, that Rourke would come off rather like John Wayne in The Greatest Story Ever Told–you know, where the Duke utters the centurion’s line at the crucifixion “Truly, this man was the Son of God” in that unmistakable drawl.
I mean, bad boy Mickey as il poverello? 9 1/2 Weeks Mickey?
But the DVD release of The Wrestler (which I haven’t seen yet) jogged my memory and I moved Francesco to the top of my queue.
Lo and behold, it turns out to be a pretty good film, at least through the first two thirds (it loses its way at that point, alas).
There are many cinematically awkward moments and strange diversions from the historical record in the film (e.g., Francis is converted by reading an illicit translation of the Gospels into the vernacular–Francis as William Tyndale?).
But there’s also much to like. Despite his physical brawniness, Rourke delivers most of his lines in mumbled whispers–and I buy it.
There are at least a dozen moments when something very beautiful and true is captured, particularly in the early scenes when Francis is attracting followers. At one point he movingly embraces a painted crucifix–and it works. Then there’s a moment when Francis gets dunked in a public fountain, followed by his first two followers deliberately jumping into that fountain, that has the aura of a baptism about it. Or take the scene when he is out on the plain confronted by many angry, alienated followers, a cardinal, and a bishop–and begins to rub his face with dirt and grass, only to be tenderly embraced by those prelates.
I could go on.
I sometimes wonder if an actor is affected by a role he or she has played. Rourke is looking pretty ravaged these days–the legacy of that bad boy lifestyle? Does he ever remember that good-time boy Bernardone?
Maybe, just maybe, when I see The Wrestler I’ll find strange parallels with his depiction of the little man from Assisi.
Thanks for this posting. You write: “I sometimes wonder if an actor is affected by a role he or she has played.” Rourke was certainly affected by Francesco as he explains here:
http://www.lilianacavani.com/news/mickey-rourkes-homage-to-cavani.html
Recently, Cavani was said to have hinted that she might work with him again too, though I don’t think she has elaborated on what the project might be yet.
For further information on this film and its director:
http://www.lilianacavani.com/features/francesco.html
Gregory, you have a very creative and engaging style of writing.
Thanks for the post. I’ll look for the movie. It reminds me of how well Willem Dafoe did as Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, after being so bad in To Live and Die in L.A.
Always like Mickey Rourke – Pope of Greenwich village, Johnny Handsome and I do recall Francesco.
I saw The Wrestler and it mirrors more closely Rourke’s grittier portrayal in such films as Johnny Handsome and Barfly.
LIke a lot of movies this year (The Reader, Frost/Nixon), The Wrestler portrays a complex hero who is very morally ambiguous to say the least. A deeply flawed but understandable character.
For me personally, these movies, many of which I saw over Lent challenged me to think about the nature of love. How does one love people who are not cartoon characters of evil or immorality, but neither are they particularly sympathetic in terms of their redeeming qualities?
Rourke does deliver a very solid and believable portrait of a man who is destined to be a wrestler in the public eye, an entertainer. TV wrestling has never appealed to me, but I can see how the Rourke character sees it as an art that he is called to suffer for.
Marissa Tormei is really good as his romantic interest of sorts – in a similarly distasteful entertainment profession.
The whole move is handled very unsentimentally but it produces some understanding of the characters,
Here’s another unlikely association: St Francis and Rockefeller Center. Many are unprepared to find there, over an entrance to the Italian Building, a sculpture of St. Francis feeding the birds.
http://www.ralphmag.org/EA/rockefeller.html
http://bisonwerks.com/Assisi.htm
Some of how it got there is told in Daniel Okrent’s book Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center. The originally proposed decoration of the Italian Building, designed and built in 1935, was thought to be too suggestive of fascist symbolism. For balance the Center asked sculptor Lee Lawrie to create a figure of St Francis feeding the birds. “Although it may seem incongruous in the light of current events, it is a symbol of Italy that connotes Giotto, Dante, and all of the humanities,” said Lawrie. Eventually the fascist designs were put aside. An interesting solution.