In preparation for the feast of St. Francis on October 4, I commend the classic 1972 film Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Although this seemingly dated film may induce some groans, it has a clear message about Francis’ radical identification with the poor and the suffering in the person of Christ. There are cringes to be sure: the hippie vibe, complete with a blonde St. Claire as a flower child, Francis prancing around the fields of poppies, the camera’s infatuation with long, slow zoom shots, and the often insipid lyrics of the soundtrack written and performed by ’60s folk singer Donovan. The acting feels overly earnest at times, and the script has its low moments, such as when, just before the well-known scene when Francis removes his garments and walks nude from the town, he declares he is casting off his father’s wealth because he wants to go climb trees.
For those who can tolerate those shortcomings, the film powerfully communicates how St. Francis’ calling stemmed from a desire to imitate Christ’s way of life, and how he embraced not only the beauty of nature but also a difficult life of poverty in identification with Christ and with the poor. The primary temptation for those making a film about St. Francis made in the 1970s was to gloss over the Christocentric nature of his calling and reduce his spiritual transformation into merely a desire to live at one with nature. However, director Franco Zeffirelli grounds his depiction of Francis in his vocation to be poor with Christ.
As the film begins, Francis has returned home from war, not triumphant but crushed, as the terrors of war have ravaged his body and mind. As he recovers, he awakens first to the beauty of nature. He spies a sparrow from his sickbed and is so mesmerized that he totters out the window onto an adjacent roofline to get closer to it. He begins to spend time in the fields outside Assisi, where he first meets Claire and finds peace among the flowers.
The film does not stop there, however, for it depicts Francis’ transformation moving beyond an embrace of nature, when he realizes that suffering due to the violent accumulation of wealth occurs not only in distant battles, but in the industry found in his home, the fabric trade that has made his family rich. Francis climbs down into the dark bowels of his father’s home, and he discovers his father’s workers living in the dark. Francis seems stunned and disoriented to realize that the home that represents safety and comfort for him has a dark underbelly of oppression for others.
As he moves through the workers’ quarters, he enters a sort of fugue state, stumbling through the newly dyed reams of fabric so that his face and arms become stained by the colors of his father’s fabrics, a visual representation of the workers’ blood being on his hands. Francis cannot abide by this status quo. First, he interrupts their labor and leads the workers out into the sun during their workday, which makes his father furious.
Later he goes further, tossing his father’s reams of fabric out the windows to the people gathered below, invoking his father’s further wrath and leading eventually to his renunciation of his family ties and inheritance. The film’s refusal to shy away from the uncomfortable and repulsive dimension of poverty and illness tempers the long shots of Francis wandering among the flowers.
Several images of Christ employed at key moments reveal that Francis wants to imitate Christ in his compassion for the suffering and downtrodden. The first image of Christ is found on the crucifix in Assisi’s cathedral, where wealthy families gather for Mass, decked out in massive garments and jewels. They have fashioned a Christ on the cross to match; he wears a heavy crown adorned with rows of red jewels, sitting across his forehead just above his closed eyes.
Earlier, the local bishop had blessed Francis and his fellow crusaders beneath this bejeweled figure of Christ, promising that God was with them in their endeavors for glory and wealth through pillaging. But after Francis’ recuperation, as he attends Mass with his parents, he has a vision of this same image of Jesus opening his eyes to stare at Francis. Francis reacts suddenly, shouting in the middle of the service, “No! No! No!”—his first spoken words since he returned from war. He makes the sign of the cross, raises his fingers to kiss them, and then nearly passes out, pulling at the fabric around his neck as though it is suffocating him.
The meaning of this outcry isn’t entirely clear until the second image of Christ appears, which Francis encounters after he escapes the hill town and finds a different crucifix in the small, ruined church of San Damiano. Here Jesus is stripped to his loincloth, humble and vulnerable but again looking straight at Francis. In the cathedral Francis had been reacting against the depiction of Jesus as a wealthy and powerful noble; here he senses that he has found the true Jesus. The script does not need to prompt Jesus to speak the words “Build my church” to Francis; his gaze from the cross is enough to communicate what Francis is called to do next.
As before, he crosses himself and kisses his fingers in reverence of Christ, now no longer struggling but at peace. From this point on Francis takes up his new way of life, welcoming the poor to join him in rebuilding this little church. When their project is complete, they celebrate Mass, in which the people bring gifts of their humble but beautiful handiwork to the altar, which is contrasted by the cold emptiness of the service in the cathedral.
From that point on in the movie, Francis is fully absorbed in his mission. He can come across as annoyingly impractical, often staring off at something others do not see (a quality shared by Zeffirelli’s Jesus, played by Robert Powell in Jesus of Nazareth). But we see him build his new way of life based on friendship with the poor, welcome for his wealthy friends who are ineluctably drawn to join him, including Claire, and begging for alms in the rain around the streets of Assisi with his brothers.
His movement doesn’t stop there, for Jesus is calling Francis to do more than expose and reject the inordinate love of wealth within his family and his hometown. After a fire at San Damiano (an historical inaccuracy)— Francis decides to travel to Rome to ask the Pope if he has erred in some way in his founding a new way of life. “Is it not possible,” he asks, “to live according to the teachings of our Lord, or have we sinned through presumption?” He goes to Rome to ask the Holy Father this question and to submit to the authority of Christ’s representative on earth.
As Francis and his brothers enter the Vatican, their ragged and dirty brown habits are instantly at odds with the voluminous and brightly dyed robes of the cardinals, who scoff at these bedraggled visitors as they walk toward the papal throne. But behind the pope, we see a third image of Christ, the massive mosaic icon of Christ Pantokrator (actually found in the Monreale Cathedral in Sicily).
Christ watches over the central court of the Vatican, stern and knowing, represented far below by the ragged beggar who speaks for him by quoting his words in Matthew 6: “Consider how the lilies grow in the field. They do not work nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his splendor was not attired like one of these.… Do not store your treasure here; store your treasure in heaven; where your treasure is, there will your heart be also…
No man can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and money!” The court erupts into fury: “How dare he lecture us on the gospel!” these leaders say, too proud and attached to their wealth to be held accountable by the words of their Lord. The guards drag Francis from the basilica, but the proclamation of Jesus’ words that so offended the attendants ring in the pope’s ears and heart, and the Pope intervenes by raising his hand in blessing. The camera pans over his shoulder, to the watching eyes of Jesus in the icon over his shoulder. When Francis returns, the pope isn’t content to sit on high; he slowly breaks free from his heavy cope, which remains in place at his seat like the empty shell of a turtle.
He descends a set of mosaic stairs in his slippered feet, wearing only his simple white alb to speak to Francis. The Pope recognizes the true spirit of Christ in Francis, authorizes him to continue his order, and calls God’s blessing upon it, stooping to kiss Francis’ dirty and sore-ridden feet. Whereas earlier in his life, Francis received a bishop’s blessing to go forth in the pursuit of war, now he is charged by the Pope with creating an army of followers like him, who will spread out across the earth, not seeking glory or wealth but to follow the example of Christ in the world.
Upon deeper reflection on this film’s themes and symbolism, the long hair, flowers, and folk music splashed across posters and trailers seem to have been mostly a marketing strategy to persuade the children of the 1970s to watch it. When watched in its entirety, it does not shy away from the cruciform nature of Francis’ life, which is reinforced every time we see Francis stretch out his arms in the shape of the tau cross, which was so precious to the real-life saint that he signed his correspondence with it.
During this Feast of St. Francis, after you have your pet blessed or put a new statue of Francis in your garden, consider giving this 50-year-old film a try. Perhaps you too will see in it a message of both the suffering and joy that Francis experienced when he took up his cross to draw closer to Jesus.
The Rev. Sarah Puryear lives in Nashville with her family and serves as priest associate at St. George’s Episcopal Church.
