The film gets its title from the Alistair MacLean book of the same name, but bears so little resemblance to the novel that MacLean loosely adapted part of the screenplay into his 1982 book Partisans.
The survivors come upon a band of men they believe to be the Yugoslavian Partisans, who are mostly Communist, and probable allies. But the unit is later suddenly trapped and surprised as their helpers are actually revealed to be opposing pro-German collaborationistChetniks, led by Captain Drazak. Taken prisoner, they tell the German army commander in control of the area, Major Schroeder, that they are actually Allied deserters. To keep Schroeder from opening Miller's suitcase that he's carrying, stuffed with high explosives, Mallory claims it contains the newly developed and top-secret penicillin, which will spoil if opened and exposed. The next morning, the prisoners are told that Schroeder has already opened the case, finding it full of firewood. They improvise an elaborated second excuse, claiming they buried the drug samples. Schroeder sends Barnsby and Mallory to retrieve them under the guard of his concubine woman guerrilla fighter Maritza along with three soldiers. Miller, Weaver, and Reynolds are left behind in camp.
Far from camp, Maritza switches over loyalties, revealing herself to be actually a true partisan and the person who had originally hid the explosives from the suitcase. She directs Mallory and Barnsby further off towards the real Partisan camp, which happens to be under the command of her father, Major Petrovich. Mallory and Barnsby escape and meet another patrol of real Yugoslav Partisans led by Lescovar, who has gained Petrovich's trust. Mallory and Barnsby are taken to their camp, which lies near a hydroelectric power generating dam. An arch bridge spanning the deep river ravine is set to be used by a coming German force for an impending assault on the partisans camp, who have been unable to destroy the bridge before. Barnsby reveals that the bridge is actually Force 10's assigned mission target.
Mallory convinces Petrovich to mount a rescue mission of demolitions expert Miller back at the Chetnik camp, using Lescovar and Marko, another loyal partisan. The four re-enter the Chetnik guerrilla camp at night, with Mallory and Barnsby posing as captives, and Yugoslavs Lescovar and Marko disguised as Chetniks escorting them. Captain Drazak discovers that the woman Maritza must have betrayed and helped Miller and Mallory escape, and he begins beating her viciously. Schroeder and Reynolds are killed in a gun battle, but the others escape with a badly beaten and hurt Maritza and with the recovered explosives.
Miller reveals that the strongly built bridge is impregnable, which Barnsby refuses to accept. Mallory hits upon the better idea of destroying the upstream dam, to use the sudden onrush flood of millions of gallons of water to do their work for them and wash out destroying the bridge. A night-time parachute air drop is arranged by radio with Allied Air Forces to replace Force 10's lost supplies, but Lescovar, revealed to be the saboteur, calls in German warplanes to stop the drop. Maritza catches Lescovar in the act, but he kills her before she can warn the others, and so German planes bomb the illuminated drop zone.
Petrovich, angered by the botched air drop, orders the men to be sent to Partisan commander Marshal Josip Broz Tito's headquarters for transport back to Italy. Accompanied by Lescovar and Marko, the team instead infiltrates the German railroad marshaling yards to steal explosives there. Lescovar again betrays them, alerting a German sergeant to their presence. Marko sacrifices himself to save the others, who then escape with Lescovar aboard a train leaving for Sarajevo. Lescovar is questioned by the others, who have finally grown more suspicious of him. Lescovar initially denies the accusations, but gives himself away and is shot dead by Barnsby, who then asks Mallory to return the favour by helping him accomplish Force 10's additional mission.
Jumping the train near the dam, the team splits up: Miller and Weaver run a diversion, while Mallory and Barnsby sneak into the dam structure. Weaver runs into Captain Drazak and kills him in a knife fight. Mallory and Barnsby set their charges within the concrete dam; its structural integrity compromised by the blast, the dam wall bursts, releasing a torrent of water that also topples the bridge downstream. The German assault is thwarted, saving Petrovich and the partisan guerrillas.
Mallory and Barnsby rejoin Miller and Weaver, but Mallory reminds the others they are trapped on the wrong side of the river. As the closing film credits roll, the men begin a strenuous journey back to friendly Allied territory.
There had been plans to produce the film shortly after the 1961 film, with Gregory Peck and David Niven reprising their roles. Following the success of the original film, producer Carl Foreman asked MacLean to write a hardcover sequel novel on which a follow-up film would be based, but the author was reluctant to write an entire novel and instead delivered a screen treatment.
In April 1967 Foreman announced he would make After Navarone with Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck, and David Niven reprising their roles and J Lee Thompson returning as director. The film would be made by Columbia.[5] In May 1967 it was announced the film would be called The High Dam and filming would take place in 1969.[6] Filming, however, did not proceed: MacLean decided to develop the screen treatment as a book; he published Force 10 from Navarone in 1968, and the novel became a best seller.[7]
Throughout the 1970s Foreman tried to get financial backing for the film. In December 1972 MacLean said Foreman's plan was to use the original cast, but commented, "they'll look a bit old for the war now."[8]
Financing
In September 1976 it was announced Foreman, Oliver Unger and the German finance company, Mondo Films, had acquired the screen rights to the novel and screenplay Force 10 from Navarone.[9] Foreman wrote the treatment and served as executive producer, but Unger wound up producing.[3]
The producers wanted Robert Bolt to write the screenplay but he was busy working with David Lean. Bolt's agent Peggy Ramsey suggested they hire Robin Chapman.[10]
In August 1977, the production company set up to make the movie, Navarone Productions, signed an agreement with AIP for the latter to distribute the film. AIP provided $2.1 million of the budget.[11]
The film was originally budgeted at $8,312,224. AIP provided $2,104,942.93 to Navarone Productions and subsequently spent an additional $97,109.15 to produce a U.S. version of the film. Columbia Pictures advanced $2.9 million and agreed to pay an additional $1.1 million after delivery of the film in return for the exclusive and perpetual distribution rights in all territories outside the United States and Canada. A German investment group contributed $1 million, a Yugoslavian production company lent or provided services equal to $2 million; and American Broadcasting Company paid $1.8 million for the right to broadcast the motion picture three times on network television.[11]
Cinematographer Christopher Challis recalled that the film was originally considered to be filmed in Pakistan until someone realised that Pakistanis did not resemble Yugoslavians or Germans and the expense to make them appear as such on film would be financially prohibitive.[12]
Casting
By the time film was to start, 17 years after the original, Peck and Niven were considered too old and the decision was made to recast.
By October 1977 the main cast had been settled: Robert Shaw, Edward Fox, Harrison Ford, Franco Nero, Barbara Bach. Shaw said "I find it a bit ridiculous at my age to be running around a mountain in Yugoslavia saying 'Let's go'."[13]
It was Ford's first film after the release of Star Wars.[14] He says he picked the part because it was a "strong supporting character" that was "very different from Han Solo. I wanted to avoid being stereotyped as a science fiction type."[15] Ford later said he did the film "to take advantage of the chance to work. And it was a job I did for the money."[16]
Fox at the time was best known for The Day of the Jackal and playing Edward VIII on television.[17]Caroline Munro said she was offered the female lead but she turned it down because it involved too much nudity.[18]
MacLean was reportedly unhappy with the prominence given to the Barbara Bach character. "She's of minimal importance in my novel," he said.[19]
President Tito of Yugoslavia authorised his government to assist the production, including providing 2,000 soldiers as extras as well as uniforms and equipment and several Yugoslavian army T-34 tanks. He visited the set.[21]
Some scenes were also shot in the Royal Naval Dockyard (South Yard) in Devonport, Plymouth. During a shot of the railway carriages the letters PSTO(N) can be seen, this stands for Principal Supply and Transport Officer (Navy), and on Jersey in the Channel Islands.[3]
George MacDonald Fraser was hired to do further work on the script during filming in Yugoslavia, in part because he and Guy Hamilton got along well when both worked on Superman (1978). However Fraser is not credited on the film.[1]
Edward Fox said five people worked on the script. "The action had been laid down but the characters were still stick figures. We had to dress them up and make the lines fit them as we went along."[22]
Ford said during filming, "I was lost because I didn't know what the story was about. I didn't have anything to act. There was no reason for my character being there. I had no part of the story that was important to tell. I had a hard time taking the stage with the bull that I was supposed to be doing."[16]
The bridge over the Tara River, which is the target of the commando operation in the film, was destroyed by partisans in 1942 with the original engineer that built the bridge (Lazar Jauković) involved in the operation to destroy it.[23]
Shaw said during filming that "I'm seriously thinking that this might be my last film. I no longer have anything real to say. I'm appalled at some of the lines. I'm not at ease in film. I can't remember the last film I enjoyed making."[24] Shaw's words proved prophetic as he died in August 1978 of a heart attack, before Navarone was released. It was his penultimate film, as he was filming Avalanche Express when he died.[25]
Filming went over budget to more than $10 million and the completion guarantor had to step in and provide additional funds.[11]
Musical score
Composer Ron Goodwin scored the film to the 126-minute version during the summer of 1978. Before the film was released it was shortened to 118 minutes. Additional music cues were created by recycling music from other parts of the film – typically reusing suspense passages in scenes for which they were not written. The CD release of the soundtrack by Film Score Monthly chronicles these changes, and presents the score as Goodwin wrote and recorded it for the 126-minute version.
Release
After being screened at Camp David as the Thanksgiving film for US President Jimmy Carter,[26] the film was released in the United States on 8 December 1978 to mixed reviews (according to production notes that accompanied the 2000 DVD release).
Before the film came out Maclean said in an interview that the only film he liked made from his writings was Guns of Navarone and "I am hopeful this return to Navarone will be good too, although the storyline bears little resemblance to what I wrote. Robert Shaw was a good actor, one of the most in demand in the world today. And I am told he did a good job. Whatever, this couldn't help be the best [of the recent adaptations of his work for the screen] because the rest were rubbish. But I am not bitter, you understand. The sale of my stories to the movies has been a matter of business – a process from which I usually detach myself."[27]
Review aggregations website Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 67% based on 21 reviews.[28]
Harrison Ford said "It wasn't a bad film. There were honest people involved and it was an honest effort. But it wasn't the right thing for me to do."[16]
Box office
The film made a quarter of what the original did at the box office.[29]
Legal action
Although three producers of the film are deceased (Carl Foreman, Sidney Cohn and Oliver Unger), their estates and surviving producer Peter Gettinger sued Sony Pictures (owner of Columbia Pictures) for unpaid sums from distribution rights. Following a May 2008 trial in the New York Supreme Court, a judgement awarded the producers more than 30 years of funds withheld by Columbia Pictures.[30] Sony appealed, but the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld the initial verdict on 1 September 2009.[31]
Related Research Articles
The Guns of Navarone or Navarone may refer to:
Alistair Stuart MacLean was a Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably The Guns of Navarone (1957) and Ice Station Zebra (1963). In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel. The most successful was the first of these, the 1968 film Where Eagles Dare, which was also a bestselling novel. MacLean also published two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time.
Edward Charles Morice Fox is an English actor and a member of the Fox family.
The Yugoslav Partisans, or the National Liberation Army, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.
Carl Foreman, CBE was an American screenwriter and film producer who wrote the award-winning films The Bridge on the River Kwai and High Noon, among others. He was one of the screenwriters who were blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s because of their suspected communist sympathy or membership in the Communist Party.
Battle of Neretva is a 1969 Yugoslavian epic partisan film. Written by Stevan Bulajić and Veljko Bulajić, and directed by Veljko Bulajić, it is based on the true events of World War II. The Battle of the Neretva was due to a strategic plan for a combined Axis powers attack in 1943 against the Yugoslav Partisans. The plan was also known as the Fourth Enemy Offensive and occurred in the area of the Neretva river in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Operation Trio was the first large-scale joint German-Italian counter-insurgency operation of World War II conducted in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which included modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was carried out in two phases within eastern Bosnia from 20 April to 13 May 1942, with Ustaše militia and Croatian Home Guard forces taking part on the Axis side. The aim of the operation was to target all insurgents between Sarajevo and the Drina river in eastern Bosnia. These included the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and Serb nationalist Chetniks. Differentiating between the rank and file of the two insurgent factions was difficult, as even the communist-led insurgent groups consisted mainly of Serb peasants who had little understanding of the political aims of their leaders.
Partisan film is the name for a subgenre of war films made in FPR/SFR Yugoslavia during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. In the broadest sense, main characteristics of Partisan films are that they are set in Yugoslavia during World War II and have Yugoslav Partisans as protagonists, while the antagonists are Axis forces and their collaborators. According to Croatian film historian Ivo Škrabalo, Partisan film is "one of the most authentic genres that emerged from the Yugoslav cinema".
The Serbian State Guard, also known as the Nedićevci, was a collaborationist paramilitary force used to impose law and order within the German occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. It was formed from two former Yugoslav gendarmerie regiments, was created with the approval of the German military authorities, and for a long period was controlled by the Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied territory. It assisted the Germans in imposing one of the most brutal occupation regimes in occupied Europe and helped guard and execute prisoners at the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade. Its leaders and much of the rank and file were sympathetic to the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović, and it was purged by the Germans on several occasions for that reason. In October 1944, as the Soviet Red Army closed on Belgrade, the SDS was transferred to Mihailović's control by a member of the fleeing Nedić administration, but it quickly disintegrated during its withdrawal west, with only a small number of former SDS members being captured by the British near the Italian-Yugoslav border in May 1945.
The Russian Protective Corps was an armed force composed of anti-communist White Russian émigrés that was raised in the German occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. Commanded for almost its whole existence by Lieutenant General Boris Shteifon, it served primarily as a guard force for factories and mines between late 1941 and early 1944, initially as the "Separate Russian Corps" then Russian Factory Protective Group. It was incorporated into the Wehrmacht on 1 December 1942 and later clashed with the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and briefly with the Chetniks. In late 1944, it fought against the Red Army during the Belgrade Offensive, later withdrawing to Bosnia and Slovenia as the German forces retreated from Yugoslavia and Greece. After Shteifon′s death in Zagreb, the Independent State of Croatia, on 30 April 1945, Russian Colonel Anatoly Rogozhin took over and led his troops farther north to surrender to the British in southern Austria. Unlike most other Russian formations that fought for Nazi Germany, Rogozhin and his men, who were not formally treated as Soviet citizens, were exempt from forced repatriation to the Soviet Union and were eventually set free and allowed to resettle in the West.
The Đurđevića Tara Bridge is a concrete arch bridge over the Tara River in northern Montenegro. It is located at the crossroads between the municipalities of Mojkovac, Pljevlja and Žabljak. The exact location of the bridge is between the villages of Budečevica and Trešnjica.
The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 action adventure war film directed by J. Lee Thompson from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, based on Alistair MacLean's 1957 novel of the same name. Foreman also produced the film. The film stars Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, along with Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, Richard Harris and James Darren. The book and the film share a plot: the efforts of an Allied commando unit to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea.
Force 10 from Navarone is a World War II novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. It serves as a sequel to MacLean's 1957 The Guns of Navarone, but follows the events of the 1961 film adaptation of the same name. It features various characters from the film who were not in the book, and leaves out some major characters from the book.
The Guns of Navarone is a 1957 novel about the Second World War by Scottish writer Alistair MacLean that was made into the film The Guns of Navarone in 1961. The story concerns the efforts of an Allied commando team to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea and prevents over 1,200 isolated British Army soldiers from being rescued.
The Cinema of Yugoslavia refers to the film industry and cinematic output of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which existed from 1945 until it disintegrated into several independent nations in the early 1990s. Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic, socialist state, and its cinema reflected the diversity of its population, as well as the political and cultural shifts that occurred during its existence.
Partisans is a novel by the Scottish author Alistair MacLean, first published in 1982. MacLean used portions of the plot from the 1978 film Force 10 from Navarone as the basis of the plot for this novel. MacLean reverted to the theme of the Second World War, with which he was successful and highly popular in his early career.
Operation Alfa was an offensive carried out in early October 1942 by the military forces of Italy and the Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), supported by Chetnik forces under the control of vojvoda Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin. The offensive was directed against the communist-led Partisans in the Prozor region, then a part of the NDH. The operation was militarily inconclusive, and in the aftermath, Chetnik forces conducted mass killings of civilians in the area.
Lieutenant Colonel Zaharije Ostojić was a Montenegrin Serb and Yugoslav military officer who served as the chief of the operational, organisational and intelligence branches of the Chetnik Supreme Command led by Draža Mihailović in Yugoslavia during World War II. He was a major in the Royal Yugoslav Army Air Force prior to the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, and was involved in the coup that deposed Prince Paul of Yugoslavia on 27 March 1941. After the coup, he escorted Prince Paul to exile in Greece, and was in Cairo during the invasion in April. In September 1941, he was landed on the coast of the Italian governorate of Montenegro along with the British Special Operations Executive officer Captain Bill Hudson and two companions. He escorted Hudson to the German-occupied territory of Serbia and introduced him to the Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito at Užice, then accompanied Hudson to Ravna Gora to meet Mihailović. Ostojić soon became Mihailović's chief of staff, and after the German attempt to capture the Chetnik leader during Operation Mihailovic in December 1941, brought the Chetnik Supreme Command staff to Montenegro where they were re-united with Mihailović in June 1942. During the remainder of 1942, Ostojić launched a counter-attack against Ustaše troops of the Independent State of Croatia returning to the eastern Bosnian town of Foča where they were expected to continue their genocidal anti-Serb policies. As many as 2,000 local Muslims were subsequently killed in the town by forces under Ostojić's command. Ostojić later oversaw large-scale massacres of civilians and burning of Muslim villages in the border region between Montenegro and the Sandžak.
The Bridge on the Neretva is the memorial bridge on the Neretva river, in Jablanica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bridge is part of the Memorial of the Battle on the Neretva dedicated to the famous World War II battle, fought between Yugoslav partisans and Axis forces, as part of the 4th Enemy Offensive in February–March 1943. The battle is also known as the "Battle for the Wounded on the Neretva" or simply the "Battle for the Wounded".
The attack on Šabac was attack of the united rebel forces of the Chetniks, forces of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and Pećanac Chetniks against German forces garrisoned in Šabac in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia in period between 21 and 26 September 1941, during the Uprising in Serbia.
References
1 2 Fraser, George MacDonald (2003). The Light's on at Signpost. HarperCollins. pp.130–141. ISBN978-0007136476.
↑ Kilday, Gregg (20 September 1976). "A Cinematic Course of 'Water'". Los Angeles Times. p.10 Part IV. Archived from the original on 27 April 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
↑ Hollywood battles: [Final 1 Edition] Sunday Times 12 May 2002: 18.
1 2 3 William J. Law and Helen M. Law, Petitioners v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent,86T.C.1065(1986).
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