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The Guns of Navarone(1961)
Columbia Pictures Jun 22, 1961 | Limited
A team of Allied saboteurs is assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held Greek island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.
Releases
Original Release | Jun 22, 1961
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Atmos
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: United Kingdom,United States
Language: English,Greek,German,Latin
Summaries
Plot Summary
- In 1943, the Axis powers decide on a show of strength to bully neutral Turkey into joining the war on their side. Their target is 2000 British soldiers who are marooned on the island of Kheros in the Aegean. Rescue by the Royal Navy is impossible because of massive radar-directed guns on the nearby island of Navarone. Time is short, because the Germans are expected to launch an assault on the British forces.Efforts to destroy the guns by bombing have proved fruitless. So that six destroyers can pick up the stranded men, Commodore Jensen of Allied intelligence activates a team of saboteurs to sail to Navarone and destroy the guns. Led by Major Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), they are Captain Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck); Andrea Stavrou (Anthony Quinn), a former Colonel in the defeated Greek army; Franklin's best friend Corporal Miller (David Niven), a former Chemistry University teacher and explosives expert; Greek-American Spyros Pappadimos (James Darren), a native of Navarone; and "Butcher" Brown (Stanley Baker), an engineer and expert knife fighter.Disguised as Greek fishermen on a decrepit boat, they sail across the Aegean Sea. They are intercepted by a German boat and boarded. They attack and kill all the Germans and sink the patrol boat. During the remainder of the voyage, Mallory confides to Franklin that Andrea has sworn to kill him after the war, because he was inadvertently responsible for the deaths of Andrea's wife and children.In a violent storm, the ship is wrecked and they lose part of their equipment, but manage to land on the island. Led by Mallory, who was recruited for his climbing skills, they scale the 'unclimbable' cliff. But Franklin is badly injured; the injury later becoming infected with gangrene. They find that the cliff is in fact guarded after all. Miller suggests that they leave Franklin to be "well cared for" by the enemy. Mallory, who now assumes command of the mission, feels that Franklin would be forced to reveal their plans, so he orders two men to carry the injured man on a stretcher.Franklin tries to commit suicide, but Mallory lies to him, saying that their mission has been "scrubbed" and that a major naval attack will be mounted on Navarone. They rendezvous with local resistance workers, Spyros's sister Maria (Irene Papas) and her friend Anna (Gia Scala), who is supposedly mute after German torture.The mission is continually dogged by Germans, and they are captured by Lieutenant Muesel (Walter Gotell) in the town of Mandrakos, when they try to find a doctor for Franklin. Muesel and Hauptmann Sessler (George Mikell) of the SS fail to persuade the commandos to tell them where Miller's explosives are. Andrea pretends to betray the others and surprises the Germans, allowing the group to overpower their captors. They escape in German uniform, but leave Franklin behind so that he can receive medical attention.In due course, Franklin is injected with Scopolamine and gives up the false "information", as Mallory had hoped. German units are deployed away from the guns and in the direction of the supposed invasion point. Miller discovers that most of his explosives have been sabotaged and deduces that Anna is the saboteur. It transpires that she is not mute after all and was not tortured by the Nazis; but she agreed to become an informer in exchange for her release. She pleads that she was coerced by the Germans into treachery, but Miller, bitter about the way that Mallory has "abandoned" Franklin, insists that she must be silenced. It is Maria who shoots her dead.The team splits up: Mallory and Miller go for the guns, while Andrea and Pappadimos create a distraction in the city; Maria and Brown are assigned to steal a boat for their escape. Mallory and Miller make their way into the heavily fortified gun emplacements. Locking the main entrance behind them - which sets off an alarm - they set obvious explosives on the guns and hide more below an elevator leading to the guns. The Germans cut through the thick emplacement doors, as Mallory and Miller make their escape by diving into the sea, reaching the stolen boat. But Pappadimos and Brown have been killed and Andrea is wounded. Mallory saves him, pulling him into the boat; thus voiding the 'blood feud' between them.The Allied destroyers appear on schedule. The Germans remove the explosives planted on the guns and begin to fire on the passing Allied flotilla. The first salvo falls short. The second brackets the lead ship. However, just as the guns are prepared to fire again, the elevator descends low enough to trigger the hidden explosives. The guns and fortifications are destroyed in a spectacular explosion that Franklin is able to hear from his hospital bed. As the ruined guns fall into the sea, the destroyers sound off their horns in celebration.Andrea, who has fallen in love with Maria, decides to return to Navarone with her. Mallory and Miller observe the aftermath of the destruction from a destroyer.
Storyline
- In 1943, the British Navy is not able to rescue 2,000 soldiers trapped in the Island of Kheros since two powerful German cannons on the top of the Navarone Island are sinking the Allied vessels. After a failed aerial attack, the Allied command decide to send a six-man team disguised as fishermen to Navarone to blow-up the guns. The squad is commanded by Maj. Roy Franklin and composed by Capt. Keith Mallory, who is an experienced mountain climber, and his former partner Col. Andrea Stavros; the explosive expert Cpl. John Anthony Miller; the engineer CPO 'Butcher' Brown; and the Greek assassin Spyros Pappadimos, who was born in Navarone. They sail during the night and after an encounter with a German patrol boat and a storm in the sea, they arrive to Navarone and Capt. Mallory needs to climb a cliff face during a heavy rainy night to proceed their mission. Will they succeed? — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Two powerful German guns control the seas past the Greek island of Navarone making the evacuation of endangered British troops on a neighboring island impossible. Air attack is useless so a team of six Allied and Greek soldiers is put ashore to meet up with partisans to try and dynamite the guns. The mission is perilous enough anyway, but are the Germans on the island getting further help too? — Jeremy Perkins {J-26} 1943. With the battle of Stalingrad turning the war against them, the Germans are attempting to bully neutral Turkey into joining the Axis. To this end, they have trapped two thousand British soldiers on Kiros, an island in the Aegean, with only one sea route for evacuation, a sea route commanded by two gigantic German antiship batteries deployed in a massive cliffside bunker on the island of Navarone. Immune to air attack and too much for Allied battleships to suppress, the British muster Keith Mallory, a commando officer who has been working on occupied Crete for nearly two years and who is an expert mountaineer, to ferry a team of British commandos to the only area of Navarone that is not monitored by the Germans, a four hundred-foot cliff. Greek resistance is to meet the team inland and guide them around German patrols to the area of the German guns. However, the commanding officer of the British team suffers grave injury in the climb and Mallory must take control of the mission, despite clashes with explosives expert John Anthony Miller, who upon the arrival of the night of the raid finds his equipment has been sabotaged, thus exposing a traitor in the team's ranks. — Michael Daly
