Buffet de Cinema - Norwegian Ice
A movie that I've been looking for in video stores and tv listings for many years, which I found recently at Scarecrow video, is Anthony Mann's The Heroes of Telemark. Made back in the '60's, it stars Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris. It's the 'true' story of Norwegian resistance fighters who interfered with the production and delivery of heavy water by/for the Nazi's atomic bomb program, per the movie, in 1942-43. For some un-explanable reason I really like this movie. Maybe it's the cool skiing sequences, but I'm not a skier. Perhaps it's because of Kirk Douglas, but reality is I thought it starred Richard Widmark. Perhaps it's because even though I know it's probably no where close to being representative of the actual facts, you still get to imagine that there were 'real' people that did commit at least some of these 'brave' acts.
Generally, the Nazi's are always stupid and the Heroes are able to perform incredible feats. Wow! Cool!
I've done some web searches to see if I could ascertain the actual facts behind the story, but I couldn't find any.
I found one web site devoted to Anthony Mann, but interestingly enough the only mention about The Heroes of Telemark were that he'd made a 'compromised' war movie near the end of his career. There was no mention of what they meant by 'compromised'. They indicated that he'd worked with Kirk Douglas on Spartacus but was 'removed early... because of creative differences with star-producer Kirk Douglas'. Apparently they patched things up as this movie was made 5 years later. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/mann_anthony.html
Generally, the Nazi's are always stupid and the Heroes are able to perform incredible feats. Wow! Cool!
I've done some web searches to see if I could ascertain the actual facts behind the story, but I couldn't find any.
I found one web site devoted to Anthony Mann, but interestingly enough the only mention about The Heroes of Telemark were that he'd made a 'compromised' war movie near the end of his career. There was no mention of what they meant by 'compromised'. They indicated that he'd worked with Kirk Douglas on Spartacus but was 'removed early... because of creative differences with star-producer Kirk Douglas'. Apparently they patched things up as this movie was made 5 years later. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/mann_anthony.html
posted by quantom qurkington at 6:06 PM
1 Comments:
I seem to recall a documentary about this event being released in US theaters in the last decade and getting good reviews, but, annoyingly, I can't find any evidence of such a film existing. There was, however, a Norwegian film of the heavy water operation released in 1948 as 'Kampen om tungtvannet' (looked it up in IMDB), which used many of the actual participants in the raid as actors.
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