According to a 4.22 post by Deadline‘s Melanie Goodfellow, the late Pope Francis didn’t fully understand the famous “pebble scene” in Federico Fellini‘s La Strada (’54), which the pontiff repeatedly called his all-time favorite film.

That or some Deadline person mis-translated a 2013 video in which Francis laid out his impressions.

Goodfellow: “As a child I saw many films by Fellini,” the pope said, “but La Strada always stayed in my heart. The film that begins with tears and ends with tears, begins on the seashore and ends on the seashore, but what stayed with me most was the scene with the madman and the stone in which he gives meaning to the life of the girl.”

Francis was referring to a dialogue scene between Richard Basehart‘s “Il Motto” and Giulietta Masina‘s Gelsomina. While the dialogue is all Basehart’s, he’s not playing a “madman” but a clownish tightrope walker with a big heart — a circus fool — and he’s not talking about a “stone” but a tiny pebble. If thrown hard a stone can break a window, after all, but a pebble can’t.

Basehart: “Everything in this world is useful for something. Here, take this pebble, for example. It has a purpose, but how should I know [what]? If I knew, do you know who I would be? The Almighty, who knows everything: when you are born, when you die. And who can know that? No, I don’t know what this stone is for, but it must be for something. Because, if this is useless, then everything is useless: even the stars. And even you, you are also useful for something, with your artichoke head.”

More Francis: “We too, little pebbles on the ground, in this land of pain, of tragedies, with faith in the Risen Christ, we have a purpose, amid so many calamities. The purpose of looking beyond, the purpose of saying: ‘Look, there is no wall; there is a horizon, there is life, there is joy, and there is the cross with this ambivalence. Look ahead, do not close yourself off. You, little pebble, have a purpose in life, because you are a pebble near that rock, that stone which the wickedness of sin has discarded.”

Goodfellow’s article also notes three other Pope Francis favorites: Gabriel Axel‘s Danish Oscar winner Babette’s Feast (’87), Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August (’91) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublëv (’66).

But given the Pope-goes-to-the-movies topic, how could Goodfellow have failed to mention whether or not Francis had seen — and more importantly may have had an opinion about — Conclave? How could Edward Berger‘s 2024 Vatican drama not have been a front-and-center topic? Did Francis see it and dismiss it? If so, what were his reservations? Or did he explicity say that he had no interest in seeing it? If so, why? Had Francis seen it but was too chicken to say so, given the “controversial” ending and the potential for offending conservative Catholices?

And what words, by the way, passed between Pope Francis and Martin Scorsese when they met in 2018?

Pope Francis: “Will your next film express feelings of compassion, Martin? Will you put your heart onto the screen and try to share your deepest and tenderest feelings with the audience?”

Scorsese: “As a matter of fact, Your Holiness, that’s exactly what I’m planning to do with my next film, Killers of the Flower Moon. I’ve decided along with Leonardo DiCaprio, whom you’ve met…we’ve decided to ignore the thrust of Donald Grann’s book, which adopts the perspective of a white-guy Texas lawman investigating a series of greed-driven Oklahoma murders…we’ve decided that we don’t want to make another white-hero movie and that it will be gentler and woke-ier if the film is more about one of the Osage women who was almost killed, and make the movie about her heart and perspective…about what Native Americans were going through and how they felt. And then we can use this woke identity handle to go for some Oscars, and then…”

Pope Francis (waving his hand, signalling for Scorsesee to downshit): “Okay, I understand, Martin. May God be with you. Just make sure that this Osage woman character does more than just sit there and glare at people. Give her some good dialogue.”