Assisi Revisited

In Madrid not long ago, a little red sports car ran out of gas. Out jumped Jesus and John the Baptist, in flowing robes and beards, to shove the car to a filling station. From there, the two actors (Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Ryan) drove on to a suburban movie set, where a remake of Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings was in production. In Hollywood, meanwhile, Director George Stevens and Poet Carl Sandburg pondered how to "make Christ human" one method already employed: hiring Elizabeth Taylor to play Mary Magdalene) in their adaptation of The Greatest Story Ever Told. The Biblical epic continues to be the greatest story ever sold. But the moviemakers are running out of Testaments, and in Italy last week, a later period of Christian history was being memorialized in the newest spiritual spectacular, Francis of Assisi.

After spending three months searching the world for an Assisi-like setting for earlier scenes of the film, Director Michael Curtiz settled on Assisi, and it proved a happy choice. When Curtiz complained that the authentically medieval town hall did not look old enough, the village submitted to a 20th Century-Fox makeup job. When he called for extras, there were hundreds of volunteers, including both Communists, who profess special regard for St. Francis, and members of the local Franciscans. The monks also gave Producer Plato Skouras, son of Spyros, free use of their archives and buildings--including the exquisitely ornamental papal throne room of Assisi's 12th century basilica. The Franciscans' only restriction: no women within the cloister of San Damiano (originally a convent built by Francis for St. Clare), thus requiring the stationing of script girls in remote-control trailers a mile from the set.

Curtiz was also briefly hampered by a gentle jurisdictional dispute between the two Franciscan orders in Assisi--the brown-cloaked Friars Minor and the black-clothed Conventuals--over the color of the saint's robe. But Skouras' Vatican-connected authority happily ruled that Bradford (A Certain Smile) Dillman, as Francis, should wear grey.

Ironically, Francis of Assisi was roughest of all on the animals. While Curtiz eliminated the sermon to the birds as "too corny," Dillman was still required to bless a menagerie ranging from dogs to ducks. And in the closing minutes of the film--shot in Rome on golden sand previously hallowed by Ben-Hur's chariot tracks --the director decided to foreshadow Francis' death by depicting a raven on a desolate limb. Explained a Curtiz assistant: "We had three ravens in Assisi; one died of cold, and another flew the coop. Some body shut a car door on the last one this morning and clipped off half his wing. He's through as an actor."

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