The Victors ** (1963, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Albert Finney, Melina Mercouri, Eli Wallach, Vince Edwards, Jeanne Moreau, Elke Sommer, Senta Berger, Peter Fonda, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet) – Classic Movie Review 7063

Unfortunately, you expect more from this earnest, massive 1963 Anglo-American anti-war epic than either the writer-producer-director Carl Foreman or his big all-star team of 15 leading American and European players can deliver.

The Victors follows a squad of American rifle soldiers as they slog through their experiences in Sicily and France to the occupation of Berlin during World War Two. But there is as much soapy romance as gritty battle footage, in which European grandes dames of the esteem and quality of Jeanne Moreau (as a French widow romancing sergeant Eli Wallach), Romy Schneider (as a Belgian violinist having a fling with corporal George Hamilton) and Melina Mercouri (as a black marketeer mixed up with corporal George Peppard) are at sea.

Unfortunately, the screenplay, direction and performances are all very moderate, though the film is intelligent enough, and gets marks for effective moments and its seriousness of purpose. The Victors was costly and a box office disappointment, taking $2,350,000 in North America. By contrast, Foreman’s 1961 The Guns of Navarone grossed a total $28,900,000. George Hamilton recalled: ‘It was way too dark, foreshadowing the great paranoid movies of the later Sixties, ahead of the bad times that seemed to begin with the Kennedy assassination.’

Foreman’s screenplay is taken from Alexander Baron’s book The Human Kind.

It runs a vast 175 minutes but the cut version helps to make it more palatable at 154 minutes. It was cut by about 20 minutes within a few weeks of opening.

The main cast are George Peppard, George Hamilton, Albert Finney, Melina Mercouri, Eli Wallach, Vince Edwards, Jeanne Moreau, Elke Sommer, Senta Berger, Peter Fonda, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Rosanna Schiaffino, James Mitchum, Michael Callan, Albert Lieven, Mervyn Johns, Tutte Lemkow, John Crawford, Peter Vaughan, George Mikell, Alf Kjellin, Russ Titus, Alan Barnes, John Rogers, Marianne Deeming, Sean Kelly, Patrick Jordan, James Chase, Peter Arne, Milo Sperber, Al Waxman, Graydon Gould, Vanda Godsell and Marianne Stone.

The Victors is directed by Carl Foreman, runs 175 minutes, is made by Columbia Pictures Corporation, Open Road Films, Highroad Productions, is released by Columbia, is written by Carl Foreman, is shot in black and white by Christopher Challis, is produced by Carl Foreman, is scored by Sol Kaplan and is designed by Geoffrey Drake.

Shot on location in Italy, France, England and Sweden (with the kind co-operation of the Swedish Army Ordnance Corps) and at Shepperton Studios in England by Fifties American blacklist victim Foreman, The Victors was advertised as ‘from the man who fired The Guns of Navarone‘ and as ‘The six most exciting women in the world… in the most explosive entertainment ever made!’, emphasising the contribution of the six actresses whose photographs appear prominently on the posters. They are the formidable bunch of Melina Mercouri from Greece, Jeanne Moreau from France, Rosanna Schiaffino from Italy, Romy Schneider and Senta Berger from Austria and Elke Sommer from West Germany.

Censorship was still rife in America. The Hollywood Production Code demanded that scenes were deleted that showed two American soldiers patronising a male French prostitute and paying him with food. Foreman shot a nude scene with Elke Sommer for the European version and a more modest version of the scene for the American market.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7063

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