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The Guns of Navarone (film)

Coordinates: 37°52′53″N 25°39′7″E / 37.88139°N 25.65194°E / 37.88139; 25.65194
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37°52′53″N 25°39′7″E / 37.88139°N 25.65194°E / 37.88139; 25.65194

The Guns of Navarone
film poster by Howard Terpning
Directed byJ. Lee Thompson
Written byCarl Foreman
Produced byCarl Foreman
StarringGregory Peck
James Robertson Justice
David Niven
Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quayle
Stanley Baker
Narrated byJames Robertson Justice
CinematographyOswald Morris, BSC
Edited byAlan Osbiston
Music byDimitri Tiomkin
Production
company
Highroad Productions
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • 22 June 1961 (1961-06-22)
Running time
158 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film UK
LanguageEnglish
Budget$6 million

The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 British-American Action/Adventure war film based on Alistair MacLean's 1957 novel The Guns of Navarone about the Dodecanese Campaign of World War II. It stars Gregory Peck, James Robertson Justice, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, along with Anthony Quayle, and Stanley Baker. The book and the film share the same basic plot: the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea, and prevents 2,000 isolated British troops from being rescued.

Plot

In 1943, the Axis powers decide on a show of strength to bully neutral Turkey into joining the war on their side. Their target is 2000 British soldiers who are marooned on the island of Kheros in the Aegean. Rescue by the Royal Navy is impossible because of massive radar-directed guns on the nearby island of Navarone. Time is short, because the Germans are expected to launch an assault on the British forces.

Efforts to destroy the guns by bombing have proved fruitless. So that six destroyers can pick up the stranded men, Commodore Jensen of Allied intelligence activates a team of saboteurs to sail to Navarone and destroy the guns. Led by Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), they are Captain Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck); Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn), a former Colonel in the defeated Greek army; Franklin's best friend Corporal Miller (David Niven), a former Chemistry University teacher and explosives expert; Greek-American Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren), a native of Navarone; and "Butcher" Brown (Stanley Baker), an engineer and expert knife fighter.

Disguised as Greek fishermen on a decrepit boat, they sail across the Aegean Sea. They are intercepted by a German boat and boarded. They attack and kill all the Germans and sink the patrol boat. During the remainder of the voyage, Mallory confides to Franklin that Andrea has sworn to kill him after the war, because he was inadvertently responsible for the deaths of Andrea's wife and children.

In a violent storm, the ship is wrecked and they lose part of their equipment, but manage to land on the island. Led by Mallory, who was recruited for his climbing skills, they scale the 'unclimbable' cliff. But Franklin is badly injured; the injury later becoming infected with gangrene. They find that the cliff is in fact guarded after all. Miller suggests that they leave Franklin to be "well cared for" by the enemy. Mallory, who now assumes command of the mission, feels that Franklin would be forced to reveal their plans, so he orders two men to carry the injured man on a stretcher.

Franklin tries to commit suicide, but Mallory lies to him, saying that their mission has been "scrubbed" and that a major naval attack will be mounted on Navarone. They rendezvous with local resistance workers, Spyros's sister Maria (Irene Papas) and her friend Anna (Gia Scala), who is supposedly mute after German torture.

The mission is continually dogged by Germans, and they are captured by Lieutenant Muesel (Walter Gotell) in the town of Mandrakos, when they try to find a doctor for Franklin. Muesel and Hauptmann Sessler (George Mikell) of the SS fail to persuade the commandos to tell them where Miller's explosives are. Andrea pretends to betray the others and surprises the Germans, allowing the group to overpower their captors. They escape in German uniform, but leave Franklin behind so that he can receive medical attention.

In due course, Franklin is injected with scopolamine and gives up the false "information", as Mallory had hoped. German units are deployed away from the guns and in the direction of the supposed invasion point.

Miller discovers that most of his explosives have been sabotaged and deduces that Anna is the saboteur. It transpires that she is not mute after all and was not tortured by the Nazis; but she agreed to become an informer in exchange for her release. She pleads that she was coerced by the Germans into treachery, but Miller, bitter about the way that Mallory has "abandoned" Franklin, insists that she must be silenced. It is Maria who shoots her dead.

The team splits up: Mallory and Miller go for the guns, while Andrea and Pappadimos create a distraction in the city; Maria and Brown are assigned to steal a boat for their escape.

Mallory and Miller make their way into the heavily fortified gun emplacements. Locking the main entrance behind them — which sets off an alarm — they set obvious explosives on the guns and hide more below an elevator leading to the guns. The Germans cut through the thick emplacement doors, as Mallory and Miller make their escape by diving into the sea, reaching the stolen boat. But Pappadimos and Brown have been killed and Andrea is wounded. Mallory saves him, pulling him into the boat; thus voiding the 'blood feud' between them.

The Allied destroyers appear on schedule. The Germans remove the explosives planted on the guns and begin to fire on the passing Allied flotilla. The first salvo falls short. The second brackets the lead ship. However, just as the guns are prepared to fire again, the elevator descends low enough to trigger the hidden explosives. The guns and fortifications are destroyed in a spectacular explosion that Franklin is able to hear from his hospital bed. As the ruined guns fall into the sea, the destroyers sound off their horns in celebration.

Andrea, who has fallen in love with Maria, decides to return to Navarone with her. Mallory and Miller observe the aftermath of the destruction from a destroyer.

Cast

Production

The film was part of a cycle of big-budget World War II adventures that included The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Longest Day (1962) and The Great Escape (1963). The screenplay, adapted by producer Carl Foreman, made significant changes from the novel.

The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson after original director Alexander Mackendrick was fired by Carl Foreman due to "creative differences". The Greek island of Rhodes provided locations and Quinn was so taken with the area that he bought land there in an area still called Anthony Quinn Bay. Some further scenes were shot on the islands of Gozo, near Malta, and Tino, in the Ligurian Sea. One of the warships in the film, the USS Slater (DE-766) then a training ship in the Hellenic Navy known as Aetos (D-01), is preserved as a museum ship in Albany, New York.[1]

As described by director Thompson in the DVD commentary track, David Niven became severely ill after shooting in the pool of water underneath the cave elevator and nearly died, remaining in hospital for some weeks as other portions of the cave sequence were completed by the crew. However, since key scenes with Niven remained incomplete at that time, and it was in doubt whether Niven would be able to return at all to finish the film, the entire production was in jeopardy, and reshooting key scenes throughout the film with some other actor—and even abandoning the whole project to collect the insurance—was contemplated. Fortunately Niven was able to complete his scenes some weeks later.

The film's maps were created by Halas and Batchelor, a British team best known for their animated films.

Reception

The film was a major box office success and the eighth top grossing film of 1961 earning a net profit of $18,500,000.[2] As a result, MacLean reunited Mallory, Miller, and Andrea in the best-seller Force 10 From Navarone, the only sequel of his long writing career, in 1968. That was in turn filmed as the significantly different Force 10 from Navarone in 1978 by British director Guy Hamilton, a veteran of several James Bond films. Despite a cast that included Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, and Harrison Ford, it was a critical and commercial failure.

Awards

Won
Nominated[3]

References

  1. ^ "Aboard the U.S.S. Slater in Albany, NY". New York Traveler.net.
  2. ^ Steinberg, Cobbett (1980). Film Facts. New York: Facts on File, Inc. p. 24. ISBN 0-87196-313-2.
  3. ^ "The 34th Academy Awards (1962) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-08-22.

External links

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