The purpose of movies has changed dramatically over the past fifty years. We live in an age of blockbusters, full of sound and fury signifying nothing and sometimes even less than that. These are quick snacks, as disposable as the popcorn you eat while watching them. But when you look back half a decade ago, it's clear that while large scale movies existed, they were made with loftier goals. This was still a time where going to the movies was an event. Television existed, but its overall quality paled into comparison as to what Hollywood was putting out. You'd spend the week looking forward to Saturday, when perhaps your mother and father would bestow upon you a dollar to spend the day watching a double feature, a newsreel, and maybe even a cartoon at grand local theatre. And the blockbusters? Well they were the big events, the ones where the studios would tell an epic story, using the biggest actors at their disposal. There would be action, humor, special effects, maybe some romance and songs, but above all a sense of quality.
"The Guns of Navarone" is a fine example of this. This is not one of the best films I've ever seen, and probably not the best of this type of film either, but I had a great time watching it. Some of that would be attributed to seeing it on the big screen at the New Beverly Cinema (the Quentin Tarantino owned revival house in Hollywood), but also because it felt like something that I hadn't seen in a long time. The story is of a fictional 1943 World War Two mission to destroy the titular "Guns of Navarone", radar-directed guns located on a German fortress in the Aegean sea, preventing the British navy from rescuing two thousand British soldiers marooned on a nearby Greek island. The guns are hunkered away in a cave on top of an unconquerable peak, meaning they are safe from any aerial attacks. With only a week until to destroy these weapons, the British assemble a super team consisting of "The Human Fly", Capt. Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck) the greatest mountain climber in the world, Cpl. John Miller (David Niven) an explosives expert, Col. Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn) Mallory's Greek buddy, Pvt. Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker) handy with a knife, and Pvt. Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren) called a "born killer", who are all led by Maj. Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), nicknamed "Lucky". These six men are responsible for traveling to Greece by boat, scaling an unscalable cliff, making their way through the country unseen, and entering the German fortress to blow up the invulnerable guns. Great concept for an adventure film. And so begins a two and a half hour odyssey with tons of surprising twists and suspenseful turns.
It's a paint by numbers story and it checks off all the major sixties action film plot points. There are quiet character moments where private trials and tribulations are revealed, encounters and escapes from the enemy, injuries, deaths, and of course a mole. "Navarone" does pull most of them off however. Looking back at my notes, there are many places where I've written things like "F'n ships mast falls off" or "F'n shot a bunch of Nazis" in reference to instances that played against my expectations in hugely positive way. This is a relic of a different age, a fictional war film. Whereas today films like "Band Of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan" want to convey the World War Two experience as accurately as possible, "Navarone" was instead trying to entertain and thrill a nation still reeling from a war that had only ended fifteen years earlier. As such, this is much closer in tone to "The Expendables" then to something like "The Hurt Locker".
As to why it's not the greatest movie; It's not a huge deal in a film like this, but there is a distinct lack of
character development. Similar to things like "The Magnificent Seven",
"The Great Escape", and "The Dirty Dozen", each character has a hook and
that's how we're suppose to know them. Here and there a line will be
thrown out to supposedly explain their back stories, but it's done very lazily. For example, while the six are first getting to know each other on their way to Greece, Mallory and Franklin share a chat where Mallory reveals that while he and Stavrou are best buds, Stavrou has sworn to kill him after the war for mercifully leaving some Germans alive who later killed Stavrou's wife and children. That's some heavy stuff, but it's never mentioned again. On one hand it adds some tension to every scene between Stavrou and Mallory from then on in, including one where Stavrou has an opportunity to let Mallory fall to his death from the previously mentioned unscalable peak, but this happens so immediately after the reveal that all subtlety is lost. And by the end, it doesn't even matter.
Another, but different kind of example is Butcher Brown's story. He's a knife expert who we see almost get himself killed after stopping to polish his knife while the crew is fighting Nazis. Mallory pulls him aside like a football coach asking why his star player missed the important play and Brown reveals that the stress of killing people close and personal for the past six years has made him weary to ever take another life. Again, perfectly fine character plot point, but it's never mentioned again until the very end and I'm not sure if he gets another five lines over the next two hours. I'm not complaining because honestly who cares in a genre like this, but the script is very haphazard in trying to push these character moments into the picture just because.
The momentum builds and builds as they are able to make their way in the nick of time to the German fortress to being the final step of their mission, but then the film falls flat. This should have been the big moment, a half hour of seeing the soldiers accomplish their goal, but it's just boring. "The Dirty Dozen" has the great attack on the Nazi-filled chateau while "The Great Escape" has well the great escape, but this final assault on the guns isn't done particularly well. A mole is revealed to have sabotaged the explosives, but it doesn't really effect the mission. This is true of most of the setbacks they suffer, no real consequences. And the mole reveal is unremarkable and unnecessary. The writer of the book this is based on (Alistair MacLean) also wrote "Where Eagles Dare" which also deals with a mole(s), but in way that's much more related to the plot. This one seems like it's done because that's what the template of movies like require. There are a couple of deaths thrown in here as well and both are shot very clumsily to the point where you know people died, but are not sure how.
I don't mean to make it sound like this is in any way a poor picture, because it's not. It's jam packed with enough greatness that it's certainly worth seeing. It's a real studio system era production and those moguls surely knew how to make films that filled theatres. And there's definitely room for films like this today. It's not incredibly intelligent, but not hopelessly stupid either. And there's aspirations here to be more than just a waste of two hours. I wish the summers of today weren't choices between Comic Book Film 4 and Special Effects Franchise 6. And that's why I'll be heading to the New Beverly a few times a year to get my fix of this.
Rating - 3.5 stars out of 5
Random Thoughts -
Gregory Peck is awesome. If this film was remade today, Jon Hamm would
be the perfect replacement. Peck's character "speaks Greek like a Greek
and German like a German" and he has an awesome scene near the beginning
of the mission where the six are on a shabby Greek fishing boat,
disguised as swarthy-looking fisherman trying to sneak their way past
the Nazis. When they encounter a Nazi vessel whose Captain wishes to
inspect their boat, Peck plays up the Greek fisherman act to great
comedic relief. I'd never seen him so charismatic. And in an example of subverting my expectations, instead of playing Greek to get around the Nazis undetected, the guys just blow them all away. That's when I knew this was going to be an awesome movie. Plus I can't watch a film from this era that takes place on a boat without thinking of Steve Zissou, so that added another couple of points from me.
This is sort of the "Space Cowboys" of World War Two pictures. Four of the six main characters were in the age range of 45-55 when filming this movie. David Niven especially looks like he's everyone's father. I'm not a World War Two expert (he says modestly), but I am almost certain the Allied forces would have had some soldiers in their thirties who were just as useful. Apparently, much was made of the advanced age of the cast at the time as well, so good to know it was noticed.
Seeing the Greek people made me realize that if Zeus and his pantheon of gods were Greek, then they probably looked Greek. Zeus as a dark haired mustachioed man is a concept that needs to be followed up on. Same thing with the Roman versions. There is no reason that a "Sopranos"-type show dealing with these gods of old should not be made.
The whole plot is based around destroying these guns to make it safe for the marooned British soldiers to be rescued, but how the hell did they get marooned in the first place? The reason it's so dangerous to rescue them is because the Germans have the whole place surrounded, so were they just joyriding and crashed their ship?
The British Commodore who hands out the mission sounds exactly like Matthew Berry from "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace". Look it up
Back tomorrow with "The Iron Giant".
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