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Socrates

1971 2h 0m Biography History Drama List
Reviews 75% Audience Score 50+ Ratings
After Athens falls under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, Socrates continues preaching to his disciples. Read More Read Less

Critics Reviews

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Arthur Ross Los Angeles Free Press Rosselini's method is as simple and self-effacing as Socrates' life. Jan 7, 2020 Full Review Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Talky but engrossing made for TV biopic on the doomed ancient Greek orator and philosopher Socrates's last days. Rated: A- Feb 24, 2013 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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Audience Member However talky and overly didactic, this is an interesting biography made for TV that wants to be as close as reality as possible, even if the Socrates we see here does sound more like a pedantic sophist than the influential thinker who became known for so many beautiful speeches. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Roberto Rossellini's biopic of the last days of the Greek philosopher is talky but intelligent. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/27/23 Full Review Audience Member To Revenge Socrates (For Being "Too Smart") - Totalitarianism and Formal Democracy's Attack on The Intellectuals19 May '11Roberto Rossellini's "Socrates" (1971) - A Teacher Who Is Killed for Teaching"Socrates" by Roberto Rossellini is in no way just a historical film about the great philosopher of the antiquity and his conflict with some of his fellow Athenians. This film makes endless parallels between how Socrates was treated under Athenian democracy and how intellectuals and humanistic education are perceived in today's formally democratic societies. For Rossellini the animosity toward Socrates in ancient Athena is a metaphor of growing animosity toward independent scholarship and critical thinking by today's totalitarian but also democratic societies that are more and more occupied with power and profit and afraid of autonomous knowledge and education. Rossellini who knew life under Mussolini and in a post-fascist democracy suggests that to be free from totalitarian ideological despotism is not enough to become a genuinely democratic person, that people who live within a democracy but are without humanistic education, are prone to be intolerant to everybody who don't share their worldview and existential tastes and, therefore, tend to behave like typical totalitarian people. Democratic procedures without democratic mind, soul and heart are like an empty shell, like sails without wind, or like shoes without feet. The fact that today in US there is less and less money for education, that school teachers and college professors are losing their job, and their profession is less and less respected, colleges are more and more militarized in their research programs, and giant sport events, pop-music and video-games have become children and youth's main interlocutor during their free time - all this can be a death sentence to democracy. Socrates is killed again and again in history. Please, visit: www.actingoutpolitics.com to read article "Roberto Rossellini's Socrates (1971) - The Teacher Who is killed for Teaching" with analysis of shots from the film, and essays about films by Godard, Resnais, Bergman, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Bresson, Pasolini, Cavani, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Alan Tanner, Ronald Neame and Moshe Mizrahi. victor enytin Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/12/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Socrates

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis After Athens falls under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, Socrates continues preaching to his disciples.
Director
Roberto Rossellini
Screenwriter
Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Dominique de la Rochefoucauld
Production Co
RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), Televisión Española (TVE)
Genre
Biography, History, Drama
Original Language
Italian
Runtime
2h 0m