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Kirk Douglas runs rings around the Germans in The Heroes of Telemark |
Director: Anthony Mann
Cast: Kirk Douglas (Dr Rolf Pedersen), Richard Harris (Knut
Straud), Ulla Jacobsson (Anna Pedersen), Michael Redgrave (Uncle), David Weston
(Arne), Roy Dotrice (Jensen), Anton Diffring (Major Frick), Ralph Michael
(Nilssen), Eric Porter (Josef Terboven), Sebastian Breaks (Gunnar), John
Golightly (Freddy), Alan Howard (Oli), Patrick Jordan (Henrik), William Marlowe
(Claus), Brook Williams (Einar)
During the Second World War, Telemark in Norway was the main
production factory for Heavy Water, a key component for the German nuclear
programme. Norwegian commandoes were ordered to destroy the factory, which they
did with a cunning plan. This film dramatizes the story – adding more guns and
violence – but does at least make the lead characters Norwegian. Knut Straud
(Richard Harris) is the leader of the resistance, Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas)
the professor who identifies what the factory is churning out. Parachuted back
into Norway after secretly travelling to Britain to discuss issues with the
allies, they start to plan a raid.
The Heroes of Telemark
is sub-par boys-own action stuff, a sort of cross between Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone but nowhere near as
good as either. Despite being crammed with derring-do, it’s strangely unmemorable,
and although the stakes are really high, you never feel like you care.
Everything in the film, bizarrely, feels a little bit easy. Our heroes are not
particularly challenged (Nazi bigwig Terboven even berates his guards at the
base for letting our heroes walk in and blow up the factory all while wearing
British uniforms) but there isn’t any real price paid. The only heroes who bite
the bullet are so heavily signposted for death, you actually spend most the
film waiting for them to cop it.
Part of the problem is both Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris
feel miscast in the lead roles. It’s also pretty clear (alleged) on-set
tensions carried across into shooting – not only do the two characters not
really seem to like each other, you don’t get any feeling of a growing bond
between them as the film goes on. You end up not really caring about either of them
– and since virtually everyone else on the team is hardly defined at all as a
human being, that’s quite a big loss.
Douglas plays a bizarre professor of physics whose character
varies wildly from scene to scene depending on the plot. Introduced making out
with a student in a dark room, Pedersen initially denounces the boys-own
heroics of the resistance. No sooner is a gun placed in his hand though, than
he starts turning into a regular “ends justify the means” superman. Marry his
new-found ruthlessness with his regular horn-dog attitude to women, and he’s a
hard guy to like. I’m not sure a hero today would climb into bed with his
estranged wife (a glamourous and pretty good Ulla Jaconssen) and then get
shirty when she fails to put out. The part feels like an anti-hero role, reworked
to give the Hollywood mega-star some action.
Richard Harris is similarly out-of-place as Knut Straud (a
character based on the real commando who carried out the raid). He spends the
whole film looking sullen and furious – he’s going for intense devotion to
duty, but instead he looks like the whole thing is a tedious chore. Harris
isn’t really anyone’s idea of an action star, and he’s an odd choice for the
film altogether. For different reasons, just like Douglas, his stubborn
touchiness makes him hard to like.
Following these rather disengaging figures means the
derring-do constantly falls flat. It doesn’t help that Anthony Mann’s direction
lacks thrust, drive and energy and never really gets the pulse going. Even
during the most daring commando sequences, it never feels particularly
thrilling. It’s a very easy film to drift away from, never managing to be as
taut or tight as it should. The world-shattering stakes of the German nuclear
programme are never clearly explained, or kept at the forefront. Chuck in some
rather obvious doubles work (no way is Douglas that good a skier) and a few
wonky model shots (the boulder Harris and co roll down the hill to try and take
out Terboven’s car is all too clearly made of papier mache) and you’ve got a
film that never gets going.
It also lacks an antagonist. Eric Porter has a couple of
decent scenes here and there as Reichskommisar for Norway Josef Terboven, but
he disappears from the film for ages. The Nazis end up as a faceless bunch of
German soldiers, and are so easily overcome or fooled that they hardly count as
challenges. As such, the clashes and arguments really come within the commando
organisation itself, but since Harris and Douglas so clearly don’t like each
other, even their brief reconciliation doesn’t ring that true.
The Heroes of Telemark
will pass the time on a bank holiday afternoon. You get some decent
performances – Roy Dotrice is very good as a possible quisling – and the odd
good scene (Redgrave gets a good death scene) but it never really comes to life
like it should. Mann’s direction is too plodding, and the pacing of the film so
slack that it never becomes exciting or engaging. There are so many better
movies on a similar theme you could be watching.
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