Product Details

• Actors: Maximilian Schell, Ricardo Montalban, Lea Padovani, Akim Tamiroff, Harold Goldblatt
• Directors: Edward Dmytryk
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vision Video
• VHS Release Date: May 1, 2003
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B00009K462
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #9,620 in Video (See Top 100 in Video)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

LETTERBOX FORMAT

"Don’t make a saint of me," Francis of Assisi told a friend - even as his charisma and holiness were dazzling his contemporaries and generating a legend that has lasted almost a millennium. "Reluctant Saint" shows us a Saint Francis who transcends the image familiar to even the least religious among us: wealthy playboy, soldier, businessman, preacher, defender of the poor, mystic.

Filmed on location in Umbria, Italy where St. Francis lived and worked, "Reluctant Saint" captures all the violence, color, and mystery of Francis’ time - a time like our own, full of crisis, craving for reform and for a deeper, simpler, more personal faith. "Reluctant Saint" offers new insights into a life that has engaged the hearts and minds of millions over the centuries.

"Reluctant Saint: Francis of Assisi" is produced by Emmy-winner Pamela Mason Wagner and based on the biography of St. Francis by Donald Spoto, Robert Sean Leonard provides the voice of St. Francis, with additional narration by Liev Schreiber

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid!, January 2, 2004

By	Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Reluctant Saint:Francis of Assisi [VHS] (VHS Tape)

There are many disappointing books and films about Francis and Franciscan spirituality. This film, based on Spoto's biography of Francis, isn't one of them. It offers a wonderful introduction to the Poverello of Assisi, beautiful to the eye and illuminating to the heart and mind. Replete with the usual breathtaking Assisi scenary one finds in films about Francis, this documentary also provides a sensitive interpretation of what Francis was up to, what values he represented, and what kind of lifestyle he lived and, by example, taught. With the aid of interpretive commentary from experts such as Murray Bodo and Bernard McGinn (as well as, rather oddly, from nonexperts such as Mario Cuomo), the film honestly explores Francis's sense of failure towards the end of his life and the extraordinary experience on Mt. Alverna that enabled him to reexamine his life's work and find peace with it. Throughout the film there are several contentious interpretations given as fact--the claim that Francis suffered from leprosy, for example--but overall, a fine and commendable addition to the growing body of work on Francis. Highly recommended!