The Guns of Navarone ***** (1961, Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn) – Classic Movie Review 1397

Three cheers for director J Lee Thompson’s famous, stirring, classic 1961 World War Two action/adventure war thriller, based on Alistair MacLean’s 1957 bestselling novel. It follows the fortunes of a team of Allied commando fighters sent to destroy the two powerful Nazi guns protected by one of Germany’s best-defended rock fortresses in the Aegean Sea.

The seemingly impregnable German fortress controls the seas past the Greek island of Navarone and threatens Allied Naval ships in the Aegean. It is preventing 2,000 isolated British troops from being rescued, so the Allies are desperate to put it out of action.

Unfortunately, an air attack is impossible, so six Allied and Greek soldiers are sent ashore to meet up with partisans to try to dynamite the guns.

Gregory Peck (as Capt. Keith Mallory), David Niven (as Cpl. Miller), Anthony Quinn (as Col. Andrea Stavrou), Stanley Baker (as Pvt. ‘Butcher’ Brown) and Anthony Quayle (as Maj. Roy Franklin) lead the old-style heroics in writer-producer Carl Foreman’s impressive production, which won Bill Warrington an Oscar for Best Special Effects.

Foreman’s screenplay is strong on action and characters, but weaker on its handling of the morality of war. A long, entertaining movie is pumped along in considerable style by a fine score by Dimitri Tiomkin and the tense direction by Thompson.

James Darren, Gia Scala, James Robertson Justice, Richard Harris, Irene Papas and Bryan Forbes also star.

Thompson came aboard after Foreman fired director Alexander Mackendrick because of ‘creative differences’ a week before shooting started.

The Greek island of Rhodes provides the locations. Quinn loved the area so much he bought land there – it’s still called Anthony Quinn Bay. Some scenes were shot on the islands of Gozo, near Malta, and Tino, in the Ligurian Sea.

Niven got very sick after shooting in the pool of water underneath the cave elevator and nearly died.

The Greek Royal Family visited the set the day the cafe scene was filmed and appear in the background as extras.

MacLean reunited Mallory, Miller, and Stavrou in the bestseller Force 10 From Navarone, the only sequel of his long writing career, in 1968. It was filmed in 1978 by director Guy Hamilton, with Robert Shaw, Edward Fox and Harrison Ford.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1397

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