Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2931 in DVD
• Brand: COLUMBIA PICTURES STUDIO
• Released on: 2000-05-23
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Spanish
• Subtitled in: Chinese, English, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 156 minutes

Amazon.com
This rousing, explosive 1961 WWII adventure, based on Alistair MacLean's thrilling novel, turns the war thriller into a deadly caper film. Gregory Peck heads a star-studded cast charged with a near impossible mission: destroy a pair of German guns nestled in a protective cave on the strategic Mediterranean island of Navarone, from where they can control a vital sea passage. As world famous mountain climber turned British army Captain Mallory, Peck leads a guerrilla force composed of the humanistic explosives expert, Miller (David Niven), the ruthless Greek patriot with a grudge, Stavros (Anthony Quinn), veteran special forces soldier Brown (Stanley Baker), and the cool, quiet young marksman Pappadimos (James Darren). This disparate collection of classic types must overcome internal conflicts, enemy attacks, betrayal, and capture to complete their mission. Director J. Lee Thompson sets a driving pace for this exciting (if familiar) military operation, a succession of close calls, pitched battles, and last-minute escapes as our heroes infiltrate the garrisoned town with the help of resistance leader Maria (Irene Papas) and plot their entry into the heavily guarded mountain fort. Carl Foreman's screenplay embraces MacLean's role call of clichés and delivers them with style, creating one of the liveliest mixes of espionage, combat, and good old-fashioned military derring-do put on film. In 1978, the sequel Force 10 from Navarone was released, but MacLean fans will prefer to check out the action-packed thriller Where Eagles Dare. --Sean Axmaker

Stills from The Guns of Navarone(click for larger image)

Beyond The Guns of Navarone at Amazon.com

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Additional features
This special-edition DVD gives the modern-day viewer a taste of what movies were like in 1961. Four curious featurettes are included, produced as publicity for the film. James Darren narrates a little ditty at his honeymoon in Malta during filming; Irene Papas narrates a giddy, old-fashioned look at "Two Girls on the Town." There's even a filmed bit with producer-writer Carl Foreman that showed once at the premiere. The 20-minute retrospective made in 1999 has the expected reminiscences from Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn. Director J. Lee Thompson's audio commentary is a bit frustrating; he's now in his 80s, and most of his recollections are slow in coming. A historian could have brought out the film's history (it was the most expensive movie ever made at time of release) and produced a more vital viewing. --Doug Thomas

Customer Reviews

An Average WWII Movie
This is a pretty good film overall, but Peck doesn't seem to have his heart in it most of the time. I honestly prefer Force 10 from Navarone much more than this film.

Reeeeeally bad transfer!
Great movie. AWFUL TRANSFER! The sound quality is pretty good but the picture quality is deplorable. The colors and shading actually pulse! Some scenes are obviously un-restored and are full of visual noise/artifacts. Worse still is that this wasn't a schlock transfer from "Bob's VHS to DVD and Storm Door Company". Noooooo. This was a vaunted Superbit transfer carried out by Sony. This ripping yarn deserved much, MUCH better treatment. The clarity is not there and at the least, the images should have been stabilized. Issuing this as a "Superbit" is a travesty as it leads you to expect superior, near hi-def quality. Instead, it's like watching an un-restored film to VHS transfer.

British Fiction
"The Guns of Navarone" is tied in first place with "Where Eagles Dare" as the worst war movie ever produced and it is no coincidence that the same author, Alistair MacLean, wrote both books of the same titles from which the scripts for these films were taken. The only similarity with actual history and "Navarone" is the failed operation of British forces to take, occupy and retain the Aegean islands, known as the Dodecanese, west of Turkey. Churchill wanted these islands taken in order to bring Turkey into the war against Germany. Many of these islands were occupied by the Italian Army and when Italy surrendered to the Allies in September 1943, British forces landed on these islands but the Germans reacted swiftly and retook the islands, in the course of which the British sustained over 700 dead and 3200 POWs. The Italians sustained far heavier losses. This operation was a German victory. "Navarone" mentions 2000 British troops stranded on the fictitious island of Keros, which implies the island of Leros. The other island where severe fighting occured was Kos.

Most people are unaware of the defeat of Britain in these islands and they get much of their "historical knowledge" from movies such as "Navarone." An excellent work of this entire operation is "Churchill's Folly: Leros and the Aegean" by Anthony Rogers which includes the operation to retake the islands from the German point of view, using original German sources and participants. The Germans were much more efficient that movies like "Navarone" would suggest.

There are many problems with this movie. Here are only a few. Gregory Peck is not going to fool any German with his fake Greek and German pronunciations with his American accent. Anthony Quinn manages to kill three German mountain troops before they ever return fire. Why do German soldiers have to have a direct order from an officer to open fire when they are being shot at? When the commandos are taken prisoner, why do the Germans not tie their hands behind their backs? Why do the Germans take them all into the same room and not segregate them individually in order to interrogate them? When the German patrol boat confronts the commandos' fishing vessel, why does the German captain not force the leader (Peck) onto his patrol boat, at the same time covering the fishing vessel with machine guns and his 20 mm gun?

I could go on and on but the movie is not worth the celluloid it is printed on.