Francis of Assisi (1961) - complete film

Francis of Assisi (film) [Wikipedia]

Francis of Assisi is a 1961 DeLuxe CinemaScope film directed by Michael Curtiz, based on the novel The Joyful Beggar by Louis de Wohl. It was shot entirely in Italy. The film was not a box-office success. It starred Bradford Dillman in one of his few sympathetic leading film roles (he usually played a villainous character onscreen, despite having originated the role of Jamie in the original stage version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 1956).

Two years after the release of Francis of Assisi, Dolores Hart, the 24-year-old actress who plays a nun in the film, became a real-life Roman Catholic nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.


Plot

Francis Bernadone (Bradford Dillman) is the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, who gives up all his worldly goods to dedicate himself to God. Clare (Dolores Hart) is a young aristocratic woman who, according to the film, is so taken with St. Francis that she leaves her family and becomes a nun. By this time (1212 A.D.), St. Francis has a well-established reputation for his vows of poverty. The movie goes on to note miracles (such as the appearance of the stigmata on Francis's hands and feet) and other aspects of his life, up to and including his death on October 3, 1226.


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I saw where this was on on the Turner Classic Movies network, and found it on YouTube. I watched it today. If you're a Cisalpine, you should see it. Even with religion aside, it's part of our history.

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