Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1961

The Contenders:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Guns of Navarone
The Hustler
Judgment at Nuremberg (winner)
West Side Story

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 1961

The Contenders:

Fanny
The Guns of Navarone
The Hustler
Judgment at Nuremburg
West Side Story (winner)

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1961

The Contenders:
Federico Fellini: La Dolce Vita
J. Lee Thompson: The Guns of Navarone
Robert Rossen: The Hustler
Stanley Kramer: Judgment at Nuremberg
Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins: West Side Story (winners)

Great Guns!

Film: The Guns of Navarone
Format: DVD from Geneseo Public Library through interlibrary loan on laptop.

I’ve said before that I grew up on war movies. That’s true, but somehow I missed seeing The Guns of Navarone until tonight. I’m not sure how that happened, but it happens to be the case. I’m not sure how I haven’t seen this yet because it’s as pure a war movie as I’ve ever encountered and almost just as purely an action movie. Once it gets going, it doesn’t stop, but it’s not the constant combat of Black Hawk Down. In terms of classic war movies, though, it seems almost like the template.

Of course, it’s also just over 2 ½ hours long, which means there’s a hell of a lot to cover. I’m not going to go blow-by-blow, because this would end up being three times the length of my normal review. A little background would help, though. A group of British soldiers are trapped on an island in the Aegean Sea while Germany moves to bring Turkey into the war on the Axis side. Rescue of the men is impossible because a pair of radar-controlled guns present on the nearby island of Navarone. All attempts to knock out the guns have failed because they are located in a cave and protected on all sides. The Allies come up with a desperate plan.