The Age of the Medici, originally released in Italy as L'età di Cosimo de Medici (The Age of Cosimo de Medici), is a 1973 three-part TV series about the Renaissance in Florence, directed by Roberto Rossellini. Audio in Italian with English subtitles.
Part II: https://www.bitchute.com/video/LnisMvK1zfWl/
This is a lengthy exposition of the social and political history of renaissance Florentine history, told through dramatised conversations between the main participants, particularly Cosimo de Medici and Brunelleschi. Among its themes are commerce and banking, artistic and scientific advances such as perspective and early automation of manufacturing processes, political processes such as taxation and voting and conflict.
The film offers a cross-section of the history of Renaissance Florence in the 1400s. Through three parts, which the film is divided into: we will discover how Cosimo de 'Medici, known as Il Vecchio, managed in the early 1400s to seize the temporal power and minds of citizens with skilful subterfuges, even if he did this to establish a new, better government that would make the city of Tuscany one of the most flourishing in Italy. We will learn of his exile in 1433 and of his subsequent return. Finally, the last sequence of the film explores the vision that the intellectual Leon Battista Alberti had regarding Florentine customs and culture at the Medici court.
Part I: Cosimo de 'Medici, a young merchant and politician of a noble family, obtained favors from the Antipope Giovanni XXIII. Indeed, he entered politics decisively by becoming a prior, after having accompanied Giovanni XXIII safely to the Council of Constance. But Cosimo also aims to subject all the cities bordering Florence to his power, so that he is the only representative and ruler. In fact, Cosimo had also decided to establish a new regime in Tuscany that would have totally revived his family. This will be completed by Lorenzo the Magnificent, his nephew, who will become patron of many intellectuals and will guarantee his supremacy by overthrowing the other noble families of Florence.
Returning to Cosimo, he was aware of the infighting in politics that had become more and more frequent against the members of the Strozzi and Albini families. There had also been an attempted murder against him, but his brother Lorenzo the Elder saved him with a deception. Cosimo continues to blindly try to assert his control, but a new deception by Rinaldo degli Albizzi puts him in imprison and sent into exile on charges of attempting a coup d'état. However Cosimo, going to Venice, makes his first friendships with the painter Michelozzo and subsequently, with his allies, carries out some sabotages and deceptions that allow him to still be wanted by the Florentine people.
Like several other TV series directed by Rossellini during the 1970s, The Age of the Medici is a form of docudrama, in which historical information is communicated via dramatized conversations between figures from history, and between ordinary people. They are unabashedly "teaching films." As Dave Kehr explains, "The dialogue is bluntly didactic, with characters telling one another things they would already know entirely for the benefit of the audience.... Rossellini isn’t asking his viewers to identify with his characters or become caught up in their personal dramas ... Instead he creates a detached perspective."
When the films debuted in New York's Public Theater in 1973, New York Times movie critic Vincent Canby noted that while not difficult, the austere style of the films, "as well as Rossellini's total lack of concern for what might be called performance, take some getting used to. Yet once you've grasped the method and the rhythm of the films, they are a ravishingly beautiful experience":
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/05/03/archives/screen-age-of-medici-trilogy-by-rossellinifirst-family-of-florence.html
