Word: dillman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...roles, and the city was authenticked up by set designers. Crews scouted the Umbrian landscape for inspirational vistas, and cameramen photographed yards of Giotto frescoes on which to superimpose the screen credits. With all the activity, it was natural that everyone forgot about St. Francis-not Actor Bradford (Compulsion) Dillman but the gentle mendicant he was supposed to portray...
...picture combines, condenses and reshapes the main story elements of Sanctuary (1931) and its sequel, Requiem for a Nun (1951). Abandoned by her drunken date (Bradford Dillman) at a backwoods distillery, the 17-year-old daughter (Lee Remick) of the governor is raped by the resident bootlegger (Yves Montand) and dragged off to a sporting house in New Orleans, where he keeps her for his private pleasure-which also turns out to be hers. After some weeks he is reported killed and the girl goes sadly home to Papa, who soothes what he assumes to be her injured innocence...
...moments, Circle is peculiarly square. Hero Dillman, who looks like a clothes dummy in a department-store college shop, just cannot make reasonable people believe he is really standing up to those nasty studio Nazis. Suzy Parker, the famous photographer's model who plays his girl friend, spends most of the picture staring stupefied at the baggy old lieutenant's uniform her part requires, and no wonder; she looks like a flamingo in a horse blanket. On the other hand, Nigel Balchin's script would pass the strictest muster; Jack (The Captain's Table...
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...