Word: curtizisms
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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...
...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...
...highly colored, overwhimsical film version suffers because Director Michael Curtiz seems unable to decide whether he is reading from a fairy tale or a police blotter. Sometimes the archness is laid on with a trowel, sometimes the trifling action stops dead for overdetailed explanations. Bogart plays his role pretty straight; Aldo Ray is disconcertingly elfin for an alleged sex fiend; and Ustinov's mugging seems overdone. Basil Rathbone and John Baer wander onscreen long enough to look properly villainous. Joan Bennett and Gloria Talbott add their pretty confusions to the artificial turmoil. Technicolor gives the picture a fairly handsome...
...technical departments are, of course, the true stars of such an overwhelming spectacle as this, and Director Michael Curtiz (Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex) deserves to be ranked for his managerial marvels with the general contractor who put up the pyramids...