The Guns of Navarone (1961)
There is an all star cast in this adaptation of Alistair MacLean's novel of the same name which is produced by Carl Foreman and is one of the rare occasions of a film being better than it's source material. A German naval gun emplacement on a Greek island in World War Two must be destroyed by a small commando to allow the British navy to pick up 2000 soldiers stranded on a near by island.
With a cast including Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn and Anthony Quayle it would have been hard to go wrong (there is even an early cameo by Richard Harris) but very early in production the original director was replaced. Thanks to the great cast and great characters who have to battle not only against the Germans but also the elements and tension between each other we end up with one of the classic war time adventure films. There are some iconic action sequences including the scaling of the cliffs at night in the pouring rain and the climatic finale which has plenty of tension.
Carl Foreman (at the time blacklisted by Hollywood) deserves a lot of credit for bringing together the best elements of the original novel and adding in much deeper characters with more complex relationships. While in part this is a boys own style adventure this is not just a jingoistic war film as there are questions on how a war should be conducted through the actions and history of the characters.
5/5 an all time classic.
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