Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer [Giv’a 24 Eina Ona‎] **** (1955, Michael Wager, Edward Mulhare, Haya Harareet, , Arik Lavie, Margalit Oved, Michael Shillo) – Classic Movie Review 10,881

Michael Wager, Edward Mulhare, Arik Lavie [Arie Lavi] and Margalit Oved star in Thorold Dickinson’s 1955 Israeli war film Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer as young military personnel – an American called Allan Goodman, an Irish policeman named James Finnegan, a Palestinian Jewish man called David Airan, and a Yemeni Jewish woman named Esther Hadassi – during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. Haya Harareet [Haya Hararit] also stars as Miriam Miszrahi, a Jewish woman James Finnegan has fallen in love with.

It was the first feature film produced in Israel, a year after the Knesset passed the Law for the Encouragement for Israeli Films.

In 1948, Captain Yehuda Berger (Michael Shillo) instructs the four volunteers to take, hold and defend the strategic Hill 24, one of a number of foothills dominating and overlooking the highway approach into Jerusalem, only four hours and 45 minutes before a ceasefire.

So, on that fateful, fatal night in the hours leading up to the truce, they tell their moving stories in extended flashbacks, all the while keeping watch on Hill 24.

Though the characters are representatives of various races and viewpoints, producing a rather over-structured plotline and a film with a strong polemic, this fascinating, intelligent movie has a claim to being one of the most convincing and sympathetic films made about Israel. Predictably it was sold on the love story as ‘The passionate love story of a fighting Irishman and an Israeli lass’.

[Spoiler alert] It’s not giving too much away to reveal that, heart-rendingly, it turns out that the four soldiers are already dead.

Writers: Zvi Kolitz (story and screenplay), Peter Frye (screenplay).

Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (Hebrew: Giv’a 24 Eina Ona‎) is directed by Thorold Dickinson and Produced by Thorold Dickinson and Peter Frye.

Born in Haifa, Haya Harareet [Haya Hararit] began her career in Israeli films with Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (1955), which was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.

Haya Harareet (20 September 1931 – 3 February 2021) is best remembered for playing Esther in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, and sadly for the comedian Mort Sahl’s infamous comment: ‘Loved him, hated Hur’. Some may say ‘Loved Hur, hated him’.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,881

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