1. His collaborator at Rice University, Dr. Clark Read, said concerning this series, "We are trying to examine science as an expression of humanism and the possibilities it offers man in terms of a humanism" (Interview, Film Culture , 35). See this interview for an extensive discussion of the project. Robert J. Lawrence, an American who was connected with Rossellini's production company, Orizzonte 2000, was quoted in Variety as saying that the series on science would be almost totally visual and could be narrated in any language. According to Lawrence, preparation for the filming had been stalled "by the need to develop special equipment, such as cameras to film the universe and for microphotography to make possible magnification from 1 to 4,500 in a continuous zooming motion" (March 29, 1972, p. 50). Rossellini apparently planned to take his Pancinor technique even into the world known only to the microscope. [BACK]

2. In discussing this project, Rossellini again showed his political naïveté (or disingenuousness) by describing the American Revolution as "a revolution which is totally different from all others. It was not a class taking over the power of another class, but was based only on ideas" (Interview, Film Culture , 28). [BACK]

3. This screenplay should not be taken too seriously, however, as Rossellini rarely paid much attention to what had usually been written down only for the purpose of obtaining financial backing. In fact, he says in the interview portion of Baldelli's book that the script had been written by someone else ( Roberto Rossellini , p. 235). [BACK]

4. Interview, Film Culture , 11-12. In another interview Rossellini claims directly, "In my opinion Caligula, as the son of Germanicus, is a Republican" ("A Panorama of History," 84). [BACK]

5. Most of this film about seventeenth-century France was shot, surprisingly, in a small town near Rome called Magliano Sabina, only a few hundred yards from the Autostrada del Sole, the main freeway running the length of the Italian peninsula. Some thirty of the forty-six scenes were filmed there, and most of the rest were shot at the Odescalchi Palazzo in Bassano Romano. The scenes of the monastery at Port Royal and of the witchcraft trial were filmed at the abbey at Fossanova. (The locations are so rich that Daryl Chin, writing in the Soho Weekly News , has even complained that the Italianate settings are too lush for the austerity of the subject ["Rossellini in the Past," June 2, 1977].) The script book edited by Luciano Scaffa and Marcella Rossellini, which is the source of this production information, also points out the great care taken to reproduce as authentically as possible Pascal's scientific equipment and the bus that he invented later in his life (p. 177). The principal actors, Pierre Arditi as Pascal and Rita Forzano as his sister Jacqueline, were theater actors with little cinematic exposure. The actress who had played Socrates' wife, Xanthippe, reappears in this film as an accused witch, and Christian De Sica, the son of the director, plays her prosecutor. [BACK]

6. Quoted from an unpublished RAI publicity handout. [BACK]

8. As Andrea Ferendeles, who worked as an assistant director on the film, points out in a somewhat useful "diary" of the shooting, published in Filmcritica (no. 218 [September—October 1971], 354-61), the witchcraft trial, early on, is the only scene shot in individual cuts rather than with the long-take zoom "editing" (actually, there is at least one other—the debate with Descartes). She also makes the excellent point that the continuous movement of the actors is as much a part of the "zoom montage" effect as the movement of the lens and the camera. [BACK]

9. "Rossellini in '76," Sight & Sound , 45, no. 2 (Spring 1976), 90. [BACK]

10. When accused by Jacques Grant of taking Pascal's side over Descartes' in this debate, Rossellini responded with one of his most tortured attempts to maintain his doctrine of objectivity:

"No, no! I just don't like Descartes very much, that's all. I am simply reproducing a conflict that existed between them. Perhaps I was more impressed by one or the continue

other, but I try to be as objective as possible, since, a priori, you can't be. Now, maybe it's you who is on Pascal's side rather than Descartes', and so if my film helped you to make up your mind, that means that it was useful for something! I only present the givens, I don't take sides" ( Cinéma [Paris], no. 206 [February 1976], 63).

11. This reticence can also be noticed in the scene in which Pascal reads aloud what he has written concerning a mystical experience he has just had. As Louis Norman has pointed out, "Restaging the recording of the vision, instead of attempting to portray the vision itself, retains intact the sensory mystery of Pascal's experience while rendering the essence of its effect" ("Rossellini's Case Histories for Moral Education," Film Quarterly , 27, no. 4 [Summer 1974], 14). [BACK]

12. Aprà, however, in the recent filmography published in Le Cinéma révélé Roberto Rossellini , as well as Scaffa and Rossellini, claim the two episodes were shown a week apart. [BACK]