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DUBIOUS Made in 1961, The Guns of Navarone altered the face of W.W. II movies for a while, changing from the war-is-Hollywood-Hell stuff and the heated tropical tortures of The Bridge on the River Kwai to adventurous tales of the super-fantastic. Just a few to follow: Operation Crossbow, Anthony Mann’s The Heroes of Telemark, the wildly popular The Dirty Dozen, the compulsively watchable Burton-Eastwood yarn Where Eagles Dare. (And in the same decade came the gritty The Train and the nutty The Night of the Generals.) A big box office hit, Guns is tolerable if you can get passed some idiocy (like James Darren being slow on the machine gun trigger) and the sleep-inducing length—it takes way too long to get into the mission of destroying those Nazi phallic symbols. But when you have Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Stanley Baker, Irene Papas and Anthony Quayle on the roster, you give each his/her moment, and a couple get too many. If war is really hell, why does Gia Scala’s death sentence look so painless? Reportedly Peck was upset that audiences didn’t see the “anti-war” message of the movie; he apparently accepted Alistair MacLean’s novel as having a resemblance to real war when its chief selling points are embodiments of crotch power. (The author lifted them from the Dodecanese Campaign of World War II, specifically the Battle of Leros.) The credits are classy. Opened as a roadshow in a few cities, but switched to “popular prices” showcasing for all other venues. Directed by J. Lee Thompson; screenplay and produced by Carl Foreman. In CinemaScope. The sequel Force 10 from Navarone came out in 1978. Oscar for best special effects; Oscar noms for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, editing, sound and musical score (Dimitri Tiomkin).
Text COPYRIGHT © 2000 RALPH BENNER (Revised 8/2026) All Rights Reserved. |
