DbcultAccessing Vault...
4.5/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 4.5/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Pio XI e Marconi remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Is this worth watching today? Honestly, only if you are a massive history geek or someone who gets excited by old, rusty technology. If you are looking for a real movie with a plot like The Crucible of Life, you will absolutely hate this. 📻
It is basically just a few minutes of two very famous, very dead guys standing around some giant metal boxes. But man, seeing Guglielmo Marconi—the literal inventor of radio—fiddling with dials is kind of wild.
The whole thing feels like a home video someone took at a very fancy, very holy science fair. Pope Pius XI looks incredibly serious, like he knows he is making history but also wishes the cameras would hurry up.
There is this one shot where Marconi adjusts a microphone that looks like a giant metal honeycomb. He does it with so much care, like he is handling a fragile bird.
Meanwhile, the priests in the background are just standing there, looking slightly confused by all the wires on the floor. It makes you realize how new and magical all of this technology must have felt back in 1931.
The silence in the room before the Pope speaks is almost loud. You can almost feel the nervous energy in the air through the grainy black-and-white footage.
It is much shorter than you think it will be, and it just sort of... ends. No big credits, no real wrap-up, just a sudden cut to black.
I kept thinking about how different this is from the usual entertainment of the era, like Nerve Tonic. This is just raw, dusty history captured on a strip of old film.
It is obviously not a "good movie" in the normal sense because nothing really happens. But as a weirdly cool time machine? It is totally worth the five minutes of your life. 🕰️