Panel: Narrating History | Q&A: Thurs. April 14 @ 6pm

Brother Sun, Sister Moon is not the first Italian film about the patron saint of animals, the natural environment, and Italy, nor is it the last. Franco Zeffirelli’s 1972 film is one of a score of cinematographic works that take the life of Saint Francis as a subject matter, assuring the friar’s position as a celebrated religious figure of history. Despite their common theme, the films mentioned above are all quite different from one another, and Brother Sun, Sister Moon is incredibly unique in its portrayal of St. Francis. His heterodoxical message that calls on Christian to lead a life of divine poverty in harmony with nature seems to be spoken from the mouth of a contemporary anti-establishment hippie, preaching the truth of universal peace and love. It is not unreasonable that one should make such a comparison; the teachings of St. Francis do indeed seem to coincide with much of the central tenants of youth counterculture. The question of how Zeffirelli communicated this comparison remains, as do questions concerning the personal, historical, and political motivations for such a representation. As will be demonstrated below, Zeffirelli is not an easy figure to understand and cannot be reduced to a single trait, personality type, or ideology. How does Zeffirelli, politically a conservative Christian, make a film that seemingly equates a Christian saint to the "hippies" around him? This paper will seek to explore this topic by investigating the life of Zeffirelli, the film itself, and the historical circumstances of the society in which it was made and will ultimately suggest that Zeffirelli’s aim in presenting St. Francis as “the first flower child”[1] is to provide an alternative to the alternative, to transform what he sees as a violent and destructive counterculture into a peaceful and productive movement.

The memory of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s is often recalled as the time of hippies, or as an obsession with nonviolence matched only by an obsession with substance use that sought to create a more peaceful world through artistic means. If this is all there is, Brother Sun, Sister Moon is a celebration of hippie history, a vindication of the aims of counterculture through an appeal to a well-regarded religious figure. There is still an issue, however: this interpretation is too straightforward. As we have seen, Zeffirelli is a man of contradictions, and seeing Brother Sun, Sister Moon as a wholesale endorsement of counterculture cannot be compatible with Zeffirelli’s conservative tendencies. To make our interpretation more secure, we must look elsewhere, namely, to the other side of counterculture.

In light of this, we can now begin to see what Zeffirelli’s true intentions in directing Brother Sun, Sister Moon were. A year before the film’s release, he had this to say about the title character in an interview:

Francisco had everything from the Establishment: a good family name, wealth, power—and who yet didn't want any part of all this. He sought his own solution, which was not throwing bombs or taking drugs or retreating into a mental desert. Rather, he set out to change the world in a constructive way, starting the first youth movement based on self‐denial, sacrifice, and faith. The only alternative to the establishment is a humanity of individual poets.[15]

The counterculture that Zeffirelli sees around him is a total rejection of the existing order that produces nothing itself; by engaging in violent political protest or escapist drug use, the young revolutionaries and hippies of his time solve nothing. Zeffirelli’s St. Francis, on the contrary, is committed to change but not to violence (he advises his friend to peacefully demonstrate against the Holy Roman Emperor where the rebels in Italy may have sought to assassinate him). He escapes the material world but does not do so without affecting a positive change in the lives of the poor. In his words, he is “a very special young man, one of the first examples in history of the dropout who more than 700 years ago had problems of identity and searched for fulfillment, just as young people today.”[16] It is clear, then, that St. Francis is posited as a role model for the young people of Zeffirelli’s day, and while Zeffirelli (as a former antifascist fighter himself) may relate to them to some degree, it is evident that he does not identify with them. Instead, Zeffirelli is better represented by Pope Innocent III. In the face of Francis’ critique of his position, he is moved by the feelings of displacement that are answered by Francis’ religious conviction and commitment, but he is not moved enough to abandon the place he holds as the head of an institution. Instead, he sees that his idealism is compatible with the Christian church as such and moves to incorporate Francis’ movement into the body of the church (one can imagine the Pope’s reaction to Francis if he sought to promote his teachings more forcefully). When Zeffirelli shows us the Pope blessing the Franciscan revolution, we should really see Zeffirelli blessing a potential nonviolent youth movement, a hippie movement, embraced only insofar as it does not constitute a violent threat to the existing order that his conservatism embodies.

Thus, we can see that St. Francis in Brother Sun, Sister Moon is posited as an alternative to the alternative. Zeffirelli counters the counterculture by portraying the saint as a person who is like them in circumstance but able to create change without the violence that the student rebels of his time considered necessary. Zeffirelli, in all his contradictoriness, gives us a film that at first may also seem wrought with contradiction, but a look into the historical and political circumstances that influence the film renders its message comprehensible. In a way, the violence that came to engulf Italy’s political theater before and after 1972 may serve to prove Zeffirelli’s point. But there is a question of whether or not his alternative was any alternative at all, if it is a viable means by which an establishment can be fundamentally changed or if it instead merely serves to reaffirm the very system that it is supposed to change. Zeffirelli sees the story of his Francis as one of liberation, but a student protester would undoubtedly see the irony in the victory of St. Francis being the blessing of the Pope. Ultimately, it seems as though both paths, that of the violent anti-establishment rebel and the institutionally embraced reformer, contain contradictory elements that may come to thwart their ends in time.