Sanctuary

Tony Richardson's first film in America was a disastrous experience - for him, for the studio, and certainly for most of the (few) people who went to see it. Having established himself with off-beat and hard-hitting British movies and stage plays, he found himself bound by a contract requiring him to work in a studio (a new experience for him) and to use actors who had been already signed and contract crew members. He had to work from an existing script draft by James Poe, who was extremely unwilling to do the extensive rewriting that Richardson required. He had an abrasive relationship with set designer Jack Martin Smith (whose work on MGM musicals Richardson had greatly admired) and was also considerably compromised by strict American censorship. He strongly felt (as did many others) that Yves Montand was entirely miscast as a New Orleans low-life. The resulting film, over whose final editing he had little control, was a commercial and critical catastrophe, and has been very little seen since.