Probably the worst lighting I’ve ever seen in a film. It lurches from dim and grainy, with a “glow” around objects on the screen, to brighter but still somehow “wrong”-looking, and then back again.
It’s supposedly based on real-world events, but it’s very difficult to believe some of these episodes are true, especially when cartoonishly stupid Nazis are so easy to evade and outwit. None of the guards ever seem to look round.
Kirk Douglas does his best with the material, and his charm just about survives, but there’s no character for him to explore.
Too many scenes consist of our heroes running about in the snow – and for far too long, with minimal dialogue – as if the script was never actually completed. Likewise, there are lingering, ponderous scenes of them setting up a bomb, fiddling with wires, applying tape and generally pottering around. These go on and on, without dramatic tension, and end up being unintentionally funny.
Richard Harris is appallingly wooden as resistance leader Knut Straud. Michael Redgrave is completely unnecessary as a seemingly random uncle: I knew his character would die because he had no dramatic function in the story whatsoever. Ulla Jacobsson is passable as Kirk Douglas’s ex-wife, but she’s still given minimal personality and even less function in the narrative.
Despite this somehow appearing on lists of the greatest war films, it’s a long way from essential. But it might give you a good chuckle.
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