“The Heroes of Telemark” is a suicide mission movie of the “The Guns of Navarone” ilk. It was directed by Anthony Mann (“El Cid”) who was famous for his Westerns. It was his second to last film. The movie was released in 1965 in the midst of the heyday of the suicide mission subgenre. It claims to be the true story of the British attempts to sabotage the Nazi heavy water development program in Norway. The movie was dedicated to “the men and women of Norway whose bravery prevented Nazi Germany from getting the atomic bomb.” The movie was filmed on location in Norway. It was not a hit at the box office.
The film opens in 1942. There is a cool scene where the Resistance rolls a boulder onto a German tank to knock it over a cliff. Resistance operative Knut Straud (Richard Harris) convinces scientist Dr. Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas) to join the effort to stop the production of heavy water at the local plant. Pederson was hoping to sit out the war, but he is a patriot deep down. The two get along like Richard Harris and Kirk Douglas which means not at all. They travel to England to get instructions. On the voyage, an encounter with floating mines results in Straud exploding one with a pistol and Pedersen topping him by pushing another aside with a pole. The cuddly British military wants to avoid the civilian casualties that would result from air bombardment of the site, plus what a boring movie that would be. It will have to be a commando raid, naturally.
The duo returns via parachute and skis (taking advantage of the snowy locales) and hook up with Straud’s ex-wife Anna (Ulla Jacobsson). Will they rekindle their romance? Duh! Straud and Pedersen have a fight to let the bonding begin. The British send a unit of engineers to destroy the plant. They are to link up with Norwegian Resistance members. It’s a good plan. What could go wrong? Straud and Pedersen run across a creepy “hunter” that may have been tracking them. Straud (who has apparently never seen a movie of this type) convinces the group to not kill him. That probably won’t come back to haunt them.
The rest of the movie is a roller coaster ride on one of those rickety old time wooden roller coasters. There is a ski chase (this is a very snowy movie; so cold that Douglas keeps his shirt on throughout), repelling down a cliff, sabotage explosions, capture and escape, a bombing raid, the death of a loveable character, and the killing of a hissable villain. You know, the usual stuff - stuffed into the 131 minute running time. There’s something for everyone, provided you don’t want quality.
This is a boring and laughable movie. There is little suspense. Normally I don’t like the overuse of music to jazz up the action, but this movie is curiously bereft of action music. Much of the plot is predictable with the usual bumps in the road, but the oddly smooth sailing after the bumps. The characters are stereotypes starting with the oil and water Pedersen and Straud. The movie disrespects the intelligence of its audience by having Pederson multitasking as a milquetoast scientist who happens to be an expert commando and demolitions expert. There is a menacing Nazi named Frick (I kid you not) who inexplicably disappears midway through the film. All of the villains are underdeveloped. The acting is blah. Harris is surprisingly restrained. I assume Douglas explained to him the wisdom of not trying to steal scenes.
SPOILER ALERT: The movie is actually fairly accurate. The main actions by the British and Norwegian resistance to halt the production of heavy water are covered. Some of the more boring and some of the ludicrously easy actions in the film are authentic. I personally cannot complain about that but the movie could have been more entertaining with less fidelity to the facts. Plus much of the filling in of the historical facts is ridiculous. This includes the Pedersen character. Straud, on the other hand, is based on Knut Haukelid. Haukelid was one of a team of Norwegian locals who were parachuted into Norway as an advanced force as shown in the film. The subsequent glider-borne operation involving the British engineers did end up in disaster with all of them being killed or captured (and then tortured and executed by the Gestapo). Although the Nazis were now aware of the threat to the plant, the Norwegians led by Haukelid were able to infiltrate and easily destroy most of the stock and then all escaped. This Operation Gunnerside was deemed by British special forces to have been their most successful mission of the war. When air raids by the USAAF seriously damaged the factory, the Germans made the decision to remove the remaining fuel via ferry. Haukelid was tasked with sinking the ship and did so with relative ease, but with some civilian casualties, presumably including children.
Herein lies the movie’s biggest flaw. It was sold as a cousin to movies like “Guns of Navarone”, but is not very entertaining. This may be due to too much fidelity to the historical record. The actual missions were actually much easier than Hollywood would normally tolerate. The bigger problem is the addition of laughable melodramatic plot twists. The movie continues this trend all the way to the explosive climax which has several laugh out loud moments. One of them involves getting the innocent children on the ferry to play a game called “life jackets”. Gag!
GRADE = D+
The current opinion is that Germany was not on track to develop a nuclear weapon and these operations were unnecessary. Even if true, the British and the Norwegians did not know that.
ReplyDeleteI am a bit more forgiving to this film than you are because I like the scenery - the laboratory building; the rows of heavy water; the ferry - and thought that these made up somewhat for the restrained action.
But I agree that it is not top tier, and concede that my rating might be even lower if I had forced myself to pay attention to the sections of the movie that played out the interpersonal dramas.