For some filmmakers, Italian Neo-Realism meant going into the street and filming stories of contemporary life; for Roberto Rossellini, whose 1966 film “The Taking of Power by Louis XIV” I discuss in this clip, it meant filming history on the wing. That’s why there’s no essential difference between his films of the nineteen-forties (such as “Germany Year Zero,” which I discussed here last year), his melodramas of the nineteen-fifties with his then-wife, Ingrid Bergman (such as “Voyage to Italy”), and his historical portraits of the ’sixties and seventies. In this film, Rossellini (with the screenwriter Jean Gruault), traces the rise of modern French culture—indeed, of modern France—to very specific moments in the young king’s struggle to preserve his fragile reign. In the process, he makes the places, artifacts, and practices of today’s France—those that are accessible to any traveller, reader, or, for that matter, recreational eater—vibrate with the dramatic tensions, passions, and ideas of the characters he films.
Goings On
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week, online, in N.Y.C., and beyond. Paid subscribers also receive book picks.
Dept. of Medicine
How to Die in Good Health
The average American celebrates just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. Peter Attia argues that it doesn’t have to be this way.
By Dhruv Khullar
Infinite Scroll
The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher
Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.
By Kyle Chayka
Daily Comment
The Supreme Court Asks What Enron Has to Do with January 6th—and Trump
The former President notwithstanding, the government’s position in Fischer v. United States is unsettling.
By Amy Davidson Sorkin
Elements
The Highest Tree House in the Amazon
In 2023, conservationists and carpenters converged on Peru to build luxury accommodations in the rain-forest canopy.
By Allison Keeley