The Guns of Navarone (1962)

[operalover21]

One of the joys of torrenting and filesharing is that you can pluck just about any movie you'd like to see out of the either and watch it at home in your screening room anytime you'd like. The joys of technology.

 

I'll admit that this film is one of my favorites from when I was a boy. Sometimes, you get older and find that you don't like it as much. Not with this one. It's still one of my favorites. It's 50 plus years old now and so I downloaded the latest restoration (brilliant!) and watched it.

 

Gregory Peck. David Niven. Anthony Quinn. Stanley Baker. James Darren. Anthony Quayle. Irene Pappas. The British Press dubbed it "the old guys go to war." Yes, the three leads are too old for their parts. Niven even thought so but later considered it one of his best roles. He's right. He's always what I remember most from it.

 

It's a terrific war film (anti-war film, really), all fiction based, although they'll make you believe it really happened. Despite the age problems, they all somehow work. Throw in a younger Brit star and an American teen idol and you have a hit.

 

I usually can't stand to watch the most boring actor in the history of cinema (up until 1980 or so when it got even worse), Gregory Peck. But his stolidness and lack of any expressions or emotions somehow works here especially with Quinn in full ethnic hysterical mode.

 

There are great set pieces here and Carl Foreman's script is spot on, as they say. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't watched it. But don't expect MTV-like editing. It unfolds slowly and naturally, which is what makes it so perfect ... to me.

[Electra 225]

Absolutely! The reasons this film "works" so well are the same reasons that the early (Sean Connery and even Roger Moore) James Bond films work well. I think that film making in the 1960's and 1970's just works (see the "Godfather" series, for example--they would never be made that way today).

[Epigonos]

Well let’s just see how much controversy I can stir up with this post.

 

Operalover I couldn’t agree more – I loved “The Guns of Navarone” in 1962 and I still love it in 2012. Now Electra 225 I will agree with you 50%. Sean Conroy is my all-time favorite James Bond but I absolutely loathed Roger Moore in the role. I found him way to pretty and effete. I much prefer Daniel Craig.

 

For me at least movies/films took a downward turn when method acting became all the rage. Many of the great actors of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s considered acting a craft nothing less but also nothing more. Then along came Marlon Brando and James Dean, to mention just two, who for my money simply pouted their way through films. The silliness continues even to this day. I find it absurd that Steven Spielberg insisted on addressing Daniel Day Lewis as Mr. President all during the filming of Lincoln. I sincerely believe than Day Lewis is one fine actor but some of the histrionics he goes through preparing for his roles strike me as silly and pretentious.

[operalover21]

Epigonos: no controversy with me as I almost agree with you 100%. Marlon Brando is the most overrated actor in the entire history of the cinema. He practically, single-handedly, ruined screen actor. With just a couple exceptions, I almost never believed a single moment of his on screen mostly because I could SEE him acting. I could see the gears turning. He was never a person, he was an actor.

 

Contrast that with the three men I consider to be finest trio of actors to ever appear on the screen: Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, and Cary Grant. You simply can't see the acting. They are just the people they are playing. And none of them ever had a single false moment on the screen.

 

Day-Lewis is a fine actor but everytime I see him -- no matter the role -- I think "look there's Daniel Day Lewis playing Lincoln" -- and I never think I'm seeing Lincoln. When Stewart is in that bar in It's a Wonderful Life, I don't even see Stewart. I see George Bailey, in pain. Very few of today's actors can really do that. As Frank Capra once said about Stewart, "there are only a handful of actors who when they appear on the screen, completely disappear, and there's no acting at all. They just are. And one of those, is that tall string bean sitting over there." Amen.

 

Sean Connery is Bond. Roger Moore always played it like it was one big joke. And that killed the character for a while. And he got so fat! I do like Daniel Craig even though I think he's too short and he looks too "Polish" -- sorry -- to me. I want Bond to be a little more sophisticated and not such a brute. But this is a different time and he suits us just fine.

 

Just spare us the next Bond, if the rumors are true .... Ildris Elba. I can't stand him!

[operalover21]

Well let’s just see how much controversy I can stir up with this post.

 

Operalover I couldn’t agree more – I loved “The Guns of Navarone” in 1962 and I still love it in 2012. Now Electra 225 I will agree with you 50%. Sean Conroy is my all-time favorite James Bond but I absolutely loathed Roger Moore in the role. I found him way to pretty and effete. I much prefer Daniel Craig.

 

For me at least movies/films took a downward turn when method acting became all the rage. Many of the great actors of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s considered acting a craft nothing less but also nothing more. Then along came Marlon Brando and James Dean, to mention just two, who for my money simply pouted their way through films. The silliness continues even to this day. I find it absurd that Steven Spielberg insisted on addressing Daniel Day Lewis as Mr. President all during the filming of Lincoln. I sincerely believe than Day Lewis is one fine actor but some of the histrionics he goes through preparing for his roles strike me as silly and pretentious.

 

 

Reminds me of Laurence Olivier on the set of Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman came in after 3 days of no sleep and no shaving in order to look sufficiently worn out for the famous torture scene. Olivier took one look at him and intoned "oh, dear boy, why don't you just try acting?"