This was one of a series of films made by Roberto Rossellini late in his career about important historical figures who changed the world in a significant way. They included "Socrates", "Descartes", "The Messiah", "Blaise Pascal," "The Age of the Medici". The subject here is Saint Augustine (354-430), who became Bishop of Hippo in northern Africa, living and working in that era that marked the fall of the Roman Empire. It is not a devotional film or saintly biography in any conventional sense but an attempt to understand how a visionary and philosophical Christian faced the problems of his age. Augustine had dealings with barbarians, heretics, youth gangs, social misfits of all kinds. Civilization was in great flux and that era bore a great resemblance to our own. Augustine's advice to us is that we must exercise our intellects in the never ending search to know and see things as they are. It is the same advice of Leon Battista Alberti in Rossellini's Medici film and is the same advice the director himself has persistently offered all of us. The film is illustrative, talky, leisurely as are the others in this series, but it has a way of grabbing you and challenging you if you are capable of succumbing to its richness.
Review of Augustine of Hippo
