With some exceptions like Raoul Walsh’s overdone wartime thriller Edge of Darkness, Norway didn’t get enough respect in war pictures. This expensive show was filmed in some of the original Norwegian locations. A good rundown on the true story can be found at this The Globe and Mail page. Learning that Nazi physicists were producing ‘heavy water’ at a mountain factory, the super-secret Allied bomb makers Einstein & Oppenheimer couldn’t guarantee that the Germans didn’t have their own bomb on the way, which made the destruction of the factory imperative. In reaching for some new ‘crucial mission’ that could make an exciting action tale, producers eventually turned to a fascinating atom-age combat exploit in occupied Norway. Fulton (+ Syd Pearson, Bill Warrington, Wally Armitage)īy 1965 WW2 action epics were becoming more exaggerated and extravagant the prime example is MGM’s Operation Crossbow, which turns Germany’s rocket weapon development program into a 007- like spy story, greatly exaggerating what the Nazis had accomplished. Starring: Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson, Michael Redgrave, David Weston, Roy Dotrice, Anton Diffring, Ralph Michael, Eric Porter, Karel Stepanek, George Murcell, Mervyn Johns, Barry Jones, Geoffrey Keen, Robert Ayres, Jennifer Hilary, Maurice Denham, David Davies, John Moulder-Brown. Did Columbia curb epic director Anthony Mann’s greater ambitions, or did star Kirk Douglas interfere to enhance his leading character into a combo scientist, playboy and sure-shot action man? Also starring Ulla Jacobsson, Richard Harris, Michael Redgrave, and every over-fifty English name actor not nailed down.ġ965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 130 min. The show can boast marvelous locations and excellent action scenes but the script and characters aren’t very strong. Any WW2 action adventure involving the Norwegian resistance is OK in my book, and this big-star saga about sabotage efforts to stop the Nazis’ atom research is a natural - much of what happens in the story is true.
0 kommentar(er)
