sgspires

"Hanover Street" is the kind of movie people like to pick apart because the SS Sgt. didn't render the proper Hitler salute or the uniforms were wrong or because the B-25 wasn't flown over Europe but mostly in North Africa. Well, I imagine the B-25 sets were left over from Catch 22, which used B-25s, and there was a shortage of SS uniforms at Elstree Studios when this movie was filmed. It doesn't really detract from the film. These are bits of entertainment -- not a masters level thesis. I have to say this is an "adult" movie that probably wouldn't be made today. If filmed today (late 2005), then there'd be a lot more emphasis on wise-ass remarks to the commanding officer and silly, stilted lines like "If I lost you then I'd just die ... oh I'd just die." Pretty much along the lines of 2001's awful Pearl Harbor. The love story is really more about honor and sacrifice than love, and reflects closely wartime England when many single, and probably married, English women dashed off with "heroic" Yanks -- which gave way to the British saying about Americans: "Over paid, over sexed and, bloody well, over here." There's a lot of action in this movie and a lot of tension that builds up at the right moments. Is it a big, blockbuster movie like "Raiders of The Lost Ark?" No, but it's got a good script, the cinema-photography is outstanding and the score is perfect. Aside from Catch 22, there's not a lot of places you can see REAL B-25s lining up for takeoff in a film (sorry, again the Pearl Harbor CGI doesn't cut it for me) and the fear-laced banter between Ford's bomber crew seems closer to the real thing than the heroic bull from other movies. If there's a gripe I've got about this film it's Ford's haircut. You can see a lot of detail and expense in the Hanover Street set, the Blitz and even the airfield. Everybody looks up to 1940s standards and the set has that smoke-filled, perpetual autumn look that seems to be what people associate with early color films from the World War II era. However, Ford's 1978 shag kind of ruins the mood. Maybe he couldn't cut his hair because "Empire Strikes Back" was due to start lensing soon after "Hanover Street" went into post production ... who knows, but it detracts from the detail paid to the extras and the set. Still, "Hanover Street" is a good film.

Take Alistair MaClean's "Guns of Navarone" and "Ice Station Zebra" then you have the recipe for "Where Eagles Dare." Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton are sent on an Alpine spy/sabotage mission behind enemy lines aimed at confusing and delaying the Germans. It's interesting to see Eastwood take seconds to Burton's acting in this picture. Eastwood was just coming off his major success with the Italian westerns and was an international star, but wasn't an American leading man. This film marks the last time he wasn't in the star/leading man part. Dotted throughout the movie are wonderful actors who turn in solid performances. Accomplished thespians Patrick Wymark, Donald Houston and Derrin Nesbitt, to name a few, are faces many will recognize from UK television roles. An interesting point made in the film is the ordinary German soldier's sometime disdain for the fanatic Nazi SS or Gestapo trooper. This is shown through one German officer's unwillingness to comply with the local Gestapo major. It's rare to see that kind of "layer" added to the German side of a plot in an American picture. Generally, they are always just treated as bad guys to be dispatched in hails of lead or burning explosions. The film holds up well over time, and there's little to date it to 1969, save for the youthful faces of many of the actors. Some 36 years after its release, "Where Eagles Dare" continues to be entertaining. It certainly beats the current crop of "big gasoline driven explosion" movies that have no plot. It is heavy on action and plot, but it has a running time of 155 minutes -- plenty of time to develop plot and action.