The guns of Navarone

Big Budget Guns

One of the most interesting aspects about the Guns of Navarone, the 1961 film written and produced by Carl Foreman and directed by J. Lee Thompson, is that watching it provides the viewer with a history lesson in the genre of action/adventure films. The techniques of massive explosions and heroic occurrences that have been perfected -- nearly to the point of ad nauseam -- in today's movie industry can be traced, in many ways, to the action-packed dramas of the early 1960'sand late 1950's. In this respect, the Guns of Navarone provides a fairly prescient outlook of what's to come from this genre of film as there is nothing too much to this flick save for valiant fighting scenes and rather predictable characterization.

The movie is a period time piece and takes place during the midst of World War II (in 1943, to be exact). This setting is of particular importance to the central plot of the film, which pits the good guys of the Allied powers against the nasty German Axis powers. The story picks up with the Germans occupying an island (you guessed it, the same one of the movie's title) that has a number of large guns positioned at several British soldiers stationed on a nearby island. A crack command unit, small, feisty, and conflicted with one another, has been charged with the mission of infiltrating the island and destroying the guns, so that the Allied forces of good can win. What proves most interesting about this plot is the fact that there is a solid plot, with a twist or two that viewers more than likely are not expecting -- an aspect largely missing from the majority of contemporary action movies.

However, that does not mean that the trend of gratuitous violence, which is reinforced by the most spectacular of explosions and occurrences, has been omitted from the Guns of Navarone. In fact, it can be argued that this proclivity that is so important to action adventures in modern movies stemmed from a number of these type of scenes in this film. There is a substantial amount of gratuitous violence when the small band of troops (led by Gregory Peck's Captain Keith Mallory) is forced to draw down and duke it out with German u-boaters fairly early on. The explosions are in rare form at the climatic ending (another aspect of modern cinema that may very well have been derived from the Guns of Navarone and others like it during the early 60's), while nature's elements, in the form of terrific storms and devastating waves, all add to the perceive thrill.

The only problem, of course, with viewing this type of movie in retrospect is that the special effects are somewhat less than spectacular. Compared to many of today's cinematic ventures in the action vein, they seem downright tame, if not even lame. This aspect of the Guns of Navarone is understandable, of course, due to the advancements in technology and the lack thereof in the timeframe that this movie was completed. At the same time, however, it is unforgiveable for the simple fact that much of the appeal in watching action/adventure movies comes from these effects.