Sept hommes à l'aube

I first saw this movie back in 1976 when HBO, I believe, was making a run of it. It was a riveting movie I never forgot; I taped it from network TV about 12 years ago, and I recently started watching it again. Next I ordered the VHS tape, which arrived today and it is excellent, including quite a few scenes that the network version omits. The only problem is, as one viewer points out, is that in this version there is no subtitles, so you miss some of the dialog in the parts that are spoken in German. (The network version includes the subtitles, but is missing some scenes). The sound quality on the prerecorded VHS version is quite good if played back on a VHS hi-fi deck with a good sound system. I wish this movie were available on DVD! If anyone hears of it becoming available on DVD, please let me know! Hopefully a future DVD release will address the subtitle problem. It is indeed surprising how little attention this movie got. I even ordered a couple of books on Heydrich from Amazon, as well as the novel "Seven men at Daybreak" on which the movie is based. I find that the movie is nearly completely accurate. An excellent movie that anyone interested in history should see at least once.

This detailed account of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and the tragic aftermath, is likely about as accurate as any dramatic film is likely to be on the subject. The Nazis took an appallingly vicious revenge, and this film is a compelling, somewhat flawed, saga of the great tragedy that is war and conquest. Was the killing of Heydrich, the "Hangman" to the Czechs, really necessary, considering the consequences? It must have seemed so to the British brass and the willing Czech volunteers, but one wonders what the completely uninvolved victims in Lidice may have thought. Viewed as part of the overall slaughter of millions in the course of WW2, these were small numbers of victims, but is even one death negligible? Did Heydrich's removal shorten the war at all? You will have to find your own answers.

As a cinematic action film, this is not an especially inspired production. The story of the parachuting in from British RAF planes of an assassination team proceeds rather slowly until the final battle at the church where the seven partisans were hiding. The German efforts to dislodge them are shown in a detail that may owe something to extrapolation from the facts. Who knows? In any case this is the exciting part of the film. As shown the seven wiped out simply hordes of attacking Germans before the last two took their own lives. There is no question but that in reality the partisans put up quite a fight. They would have had no incentive to surrender meekly to Nazi "mercy".

Acting, except for the very convincing portrayal of Heydrich by Anton Diffring, is generally lackluster, with a few exceptions, and the editing can only be described as choppy. The language convention may seem a tad strange. Conversations that would obviously have been in Czech, are given in English. Conversations in German, occur in German, without subtitles. If you aren't fluent in German, you may miss some nuances. Since few of the cast are Czechs, there is not much slavic flavor evident. Who knows, this may enhance the more universal message that "war is hell". Oh, and did Gabcik and Kubis really take their own lives at the end?

I've seen this several times now and I can never watch the end of this movie. My husband and I watched it again last night and I simply broke down and cried for ten minutes. Such waste of young lives... To read the later fates of the characters in the credits was particularly wrenching. Very good performances, foremost of which must be Anton Difring. Beautiful use was made of Prague's older quarters. Unlike many I didn't like the music at all; I felt the subject deserved better. One wonders what the widow and daughter of Heinrich thought of the destruction of Lidice and its subsequent reincarnation in the aftermath of the war.

Operation Daybreak is an excellent film, I first saw it about 17 years ago and have since watched it several times. The plot is pretty much as it happened, save for some artistic licence with the tear-jerking finale, in real life Kubis(Bottoms) was killed in the prayer loft prior to Gabcik's(Andrew's) suicide. If you go to Prague you may want to check out the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius on Resslova,near Karlova Nam(Charles Square)Metro station,it's the church in the film and the crypt now houses a museum dedicated to the memory of the Czech peoples suffering at the hands of the Nazi's and Heydrich's assassination. Over the river in Kobylisy is the site of the assassination, two nearby streets have since been named Gabcikova and Kubisova in honour of the assassins.

If you like movies with lots of nasty Nazis and their regalia, old fashioned European train stations and exotic locales, you'll do well with Operation Daybreak. I suspect it takes a few dramatic liberties with the assassination of Reinhard Heidrich. But the basic facts are right and nobody claims it's a documentary. There are a couple of flaws. Would the allies drop agents into occupied Europe in daylight? Would the holed up assassins waste their ammunition so liberally. And would the Nazis send so many soldiers into the church basement with so many casualties when there would have been quicker and more effecient tactics. For that matter, would anyone survive multiple hand grenade explosions in an enclosed space such as the church crypt. And if they did, would they have had any hearing left? But at the end of the day --- or the film --- it's a pretty satisfying war movie, if a little on the long side, enhanced by some lovely cinematography. The brooding, low key, warm toned images of Prague, the creative angles and the pavement wet with morning rain are tremendously effective. Much better than your average war movie!