Os Canhões de Navarone

"The Dirty Dozen" may have updated the film's premise for the cynical late '60's, but as much as I love that old hard-boiled film, even I have to admit that it doesn't hold a candle to "The Guns of Navarone". Though it may be hard to remember now that the premise has been used so much, the impossible mission theme was NOT a common staple in action films until this movie. The question of whether or not the team is going to pull it off is, for once, not as simple as many other simple-minded movies have made it. There are moments where the mission is endangered by just about everything imaginable: the CO being critically wounded, suspicious enemies, personality conflicts, wrenching moral dillemas, a traitor in the ranks, being captured by the enemy. The storyline plays out like the most extreme manifestation of Murphy's Law: everything that can go wrong DOES go wrong.

The team put together here couldn't be more incongruent with each other. Gregory Peck's world-class mountain climber who becomes the team's reluctant CO, David Niven's hot-tempered, authority-defying sapper, Anthony Quinn's Greek ex-Colonel who has promised to kill Peck at war's end, Stanley Baker's weary soldier who's tired of the unending slaughter, a young Greek national who wants more and more of it...the real miracle is that they manage to get as far and as well as they do. For every step forward, they wind up paying for it. Be it in blood, moral anguish, or pain, no one comes out of this mission unchanged or unscathed. I honestly feel that it is this theme of sacrifice that is the key to the greatness of "The Guns of Navarone".

I won't repeat what others have said. My short take: It's one of the best action films and one of the best ensemble films ever made.

What I noticed on first viewing was how quiet it is. Many scenes take place without dialog or score, merely background noises like wind, feet crunching gravel, and the like. Some of the tensest scenes are made more so by our hearing only what the characters would hear. For example, early on in the film, the lead characters undergo a storm at sea and approach a dangerous narrows, and until the scene's climax, all we hear are howling wind, driving rain, and slamming waves.

A musical score tells viewers how they are supposed to feel and often telegraphs shifts in plot or mood. As used in this film, the absence of music heightens the drama and makes the action more immediate. What score there is is thus more effective, earning its composer an Academy Award.

Being a big Gregory Peck fan, I was expecting great things from The Guns of Navarone, and in one of those rare instances, I was not disappointed. Mr. Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn et al. are in top form, each of them bringing their respective characters to life and the story likewise. The action scenes are impressive even by today's standards but in my opinion they are only a secondary pleasure. The main pleasure is watching the divergent and forceful personalities cooperate, conflict, confound and finally triumph. Suspense is maintained throughout. I also liked the way complex moral issues were addressed. Another bonus is the portrayal of the Germans. Here they are not all depicted as impersonal inhuman cruel monsters. The full mosaic of human personalities is shown on their side too. But don't get me wrong, they are still a formidable enemy who keep the outcome in doubt. Strongly recommended, 8/10.

I saw this film with my father at an outdoor theater when it first appeared.

Remember those?

When those two German cannons stretched across the screen, they must have been at least eighty feet long. The special effects of films in those days might have been primitive compared to now, but those days had a trick or two up their sleeve to make the most of them, that we can no longer experience.

And outdoor theaters might as have well have been invented and built for this movie. I can't remember a more suspenseful cinematic experience in my whole life-- or a more dramatic night out with Dad. I was glad that he was there, just a reassuring foot or two away, in case the terror became unbearable.

So it surprised me to learn here that Guns of Navarone appeared only in 1961. That would make me twelve or thirteen years old, not eight. If I remember it so vividly, how could I be so wrong about the time? Perhaps this is further testimony to its impact-- how small and vulnerable it can make one feel in its sweep of events.

For any boy growing up when I did, back in the late 1970s, it was well understood that "Guns of Navarone" was the sine qua non of adventure films, a movie you called friends about when you saw it listed in next week's TV Guide. It's hard to believe so much time has gone by, both since my boyhood and since the film was made, but "Navarone" still holds up very well, a character-driven film alive with nuance and subtlety. It moves at an assured clip, not rushed or forced, making the viewer follow its story through every agonizing twist and turn.

What makes the film especially good is the crisp dialogue, lines that point up the moral and philosophical argument at the heart of the film and which resonate today as much as then:

Mallory: The only way to win a war is to be just as nasty as the enemy. The one thing that worries me is we're liable to wake up one morning, and find we're even nastier than they are.

Franklin: I can't say that worries me!

Mallory: Well, you're lucky.

Good performances abound, but the best by far is David Niven's Cpl. Miller, a complex character whose smooth front and witty banter conceals much of the conflict of the film. It's he who tangles most often with Gregory Peck's Mallory, and has at least three scenes in the film that are top-rate. We may like Miller because he keeps things humming and provides welcome comic relief, but he's no less the center of the film than Peck or Anthony Quinn, the two well-cast leads whose relationship is enriched, at least from our remove, by the unique vow Stavros has made to Mallory about the unsettled business between them.

The plot is a thing of beauty, moving with all the synchronicity and clever precision of a diabolical cuckoo clock. The special effects have suffered more than a bit from the march of time (though one should remember that was the only part of the film that won an Oscar in 1962). Some process shots are cringe-inducing now. But the pace is still gripping and the payoff spectacular. Here's the film that was the template to every popcorn actioner that came after, its imprint recognizable on everything from the James Bond movies to "Star Wars" to Indiana Jones. That's impressive, but more so is that "Guns" remains as entertaining as any one of them, and more thrilling than most.