Francis of Assisi (film)

Francis of Assisi
Directed by	Michael Curtiz
Produced by	Plato A. Skouras
Written by	Louis De Wohl (novel)
Screenplay by	Eugene Vale James Forsyth Jack W. Thomas
Based on	The Joyful Beggar
Starring	Bradford Dillman Dolores Hart Stuart Whitman
Music by	Mario Nascimbene
Cinematography	Piero Portalupi
Edited by	Louis R. Loeffler
Production company	Perseus Productions
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Release date	July 12, 1961 (1961-07-12)
Running time	105 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$2,015,000
Box office	$1.8 million (US/ Canada)

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 a box office loss. 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.

Francis Bernardone (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. The funeral befitted a man loved by man and beast alike, and ended with the birds he loved doing a flyby.