Lilies of the Field
An unemployed construction worker, Homer Smith, is drawn into the lives of a group of East European nuns in the Arizona desert when they beg him to build them a church, challenging his beliefs and purpose along the way.
“Sidney Poitier as the life-loving ex-GI who one day encounters five nuns escaped from beyond the Berlin Wall...”
Synopsis
An unemployed construction worker traveling west stops at a remote desert farm to cool down his overheated car. The farm is operated by a group of East European Catholic nuns, led by a strict mother superior, who believes the man has been sent by God to build a much-needed church in the desert.
Credits
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How many hands made this film
The scale of the collaboration
Principal cast & crew: 15
These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.
Why a floor?
This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.
Craft leads on file
Edited by John W MccaffertyShot by Ernest HallerScored by Jerry Goldsmith
Box Office
1963 · Box office
💰 Box-office hit — grossed 28× its budget
Why 2.5×?
Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).
Worldwide gross
$7.0M
Also known as
- Lilien auf dem Feldede
- Los lirios del vallees
- Le Lys des champsfr
- I gigli del campoit
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Cast & Crew
15 unique people credited
Top billed cast
Directors
1Writers
2Producers
1Other crew
3Parents Guide
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