The Guns of Navarone (1961) - film review

It is 1943.  Two thousand British soldiers are stranded on the island of Keros in the Aegean Sea and face certain death when the Germans launch an all-out assault on the region in a bid to draw neutral Turkey into the war.  Attempts by the Royal Navy to rescue the soldiers are thwarted by two massive guns situated in a mountain fortress on the nearby island of Navarone.   In a last desperate attempt to save the soldiers, a small commando group is assembled and sent to Navarone on a mission to blow up the guns.  The group is led by Major Roy Franklin, whose enthusiasm is not matched by his experience, and includes ace mountaineer Captain Keith Mallory, explosives expert Corporal Miller, ruthless Greek colonel Andrea Stavros, vicious Greek-American Spyros Pappadimos and cut-throat assassin Butcher Brown.   During a daring ascent of a sheer cliff face, Franklin is injured and Mallory assumes command.  The group then meets up with local resistance fighters as planned but things soon begin to go wrong.  It is as if someone in the group is working for the Germans...

J. Lee Thompson’s blockbuster adaptation of Alistair MacLean’s best-selling novel The Guns of Navarone pulls out all the stops and makes a gripping wartime action thriller, despite being at least thirty minutes too long and resorting to the kind of tired clichés which must have curled a few toes even when the film was first seen.  Thompson’s superlative direction of the numerous action scenes compensate for some obvious deficiencies in the screenplay, which is weak on characterisation and plays the tacky sanctimonious card a little too often for most people’s taste.  Alexander Mackendrick was originally assigned to direct the film but was sent packing early into the shoot after falling out with producer Carl Foreman.

Gregory Pecks heads a cast of impeccable quality, with every big name actor pulling his weight to the utmost.  David Niven periodically steals the focus from his illustrious co-stars with his over-righteous but sincerely meant tirades against the immorality of war, but it is the formidable Anthony Quinn who delivers the best performance, helped by the fact that his is the only character that is not a walking cliché.  Although a lot of time is wasted on tedious running about and futile shouting matches, the film redeems itself with its nerve-wrackingly tense denouement, which stands as one of the most exciting and most stunningly realised climaxes to any film in the action genre.  Dimitri Tiomkin’s evocative score and Oswald Morris’s sumptuous colour cinematography bring a poetic touch that helps to distract us from the all-too-mechanical plot.  Although nominated for seven Oscars, The Guns of Navarone only won one award, in the Best Effects category.  The film’s enormous popularity motivated Alistair MacLean to write a sequel to his original novel, Force 10 from Navarone, which was later adapted as a film, but without success.

© Derek Adamson 2010

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