36 Hours

36 Hours
Movie poster
Directed by	George Seaton
Produced by	William Perlberg
Written by	George Seaton (screenplay)
Starring	James Garner Rod Taylor Eva Marie Saint
Music by	Dimitri Tiomkin
Cinematography	Philip H. Lathrop
Editing by	Adrienne Fazan
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	January 28, 1965 (New York)
Running time	115 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$2 million[1]

36 Hours is a 1965 American suspense film, based on the short story "Beware of the Dog" by Roald Dahl,^[2] starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, and Rod Taylor, and directed by George Seaton. An American officer is deceived into believing that he has suffered from amnesia and that World War II has ended years ago in an effort to get him to reveal a vital secret.

Plot

Having attended General Eisenhower's final briefing concerning D-Day, U.S. Army Major Jefferson Pike is sent from London to confirm with a German double agent he has recruited in Lisbon that the Nazis still expect the invasion in the wrong place. However, Pike falls into a trap; he is drugged into unconsciousness.

When Pike wakes up, he is in what seems to be a US Army hospital. His hair is graying and he now needs glasses to read. He is told it is 6 years later and the hospital is in postwar, occupied Germany, yet he has no memory of the intervening period. He meets a psychiatrist, Major Walter Gerber, who explains that he has been having episodes of memory loss for the past few years, ever since he sustained physical trauma in Portugal in June 1944. He advises Pike not to worry, as his blocked memories have always resurfaced within a few weeks, helped along by a treatment that mostly consists of remembering events prior to Lisbon, and then pushing on into the blank period. Gerber is assisted by a nurse, the dispassionate Anna Hedler. To support the illusion that he has been a hospital patient for some time, Pike is provided with letters supposedly written by his father, and photos of his parents — Gerber has been researching Pike for many months to prepare for this event — and Hedler tells Pike she is his wife.

Pike is completely taken in, and is gratified that his pre-Lisbon memories, at least, are intact and clear. For instance, he remembers the D-Day briefing as if it happened only yesterday. As part of the therapy, he recounts the details of the D-Day invasion, particularly the all-important location of Normandy (rather than Pas de Calais, as believed by the German high command) as well as the date, June 5, to Gerber and Otto Schack.

Pike finally realizes that it is all a hoax when he notices that a nearly-invisible paper cut he got in 1944 has not healed yet. Gerber, as it turns out, is a German-American who had returned to the Fatherland to serve the Nazi cause. He likes Pike and readily admits the deception. He says he originally developed genuine techniques to treat amnesia and they had been perverted to this purpose. Pike's hair had been dyed, of course, and an injection of atropine had impaired his close vision. However, when Pike claims he knew the truth all along and his statements about Normandy were a cover story, Gerber is skeptical.

With the assistance of Anna, who is actually a concentration camp inmate, Pike manages to convince SS officer Schack that he knew all along that it was a ruse. Schack now believes the invasion will be at Calais. Gerber, though, does not, so he plays one last trick, setting the clock in Pike's room ahead several hours. When Pike thinks the invasion has already begun, he lets his guard down and confirms Gerber's suspicions about the Normandy invasion. Gerber then sends an emergency dispatch, which Schack intercepts and disregards, even suggesting that Gerber may be a double agent. As it happens, the weather is too rough and Eisenhower postpones the invasion a day, discrediting Gerber, and Schack orders Gerber's arrest.

Gerber knows that Schack will return to kill them when the Normandy information proves correct, so that his blunder is not revealed. The doctor secretly lets Anna and Pike go, asking Pike to take his psychological research papers on true amnesiacs with him to the West. After he hears the news of the Normandy landing on the 6th, he then takes poison. When Schack shows up, Gerber tries to shoot him but dies too soon. Schack pursues the escaped couple alone, ordering his men to follow when they are assembled.

During their escape, Anna tells Pike of her abuse in the camp, which has left her emotionless. She and Pike go to the local minister, where they are referred to a frankly corrupt, middle-aged German border guard, Sgt. Ernst, who is willing to help them cross the border in return for Pike's watch and Hedler's gold ring. Ernst gives Elsa, the minister's housekeeper, the ring. After the couple and Ernst head for the border, Schack shows up at the ministry. When he sees Hedler's gold ring on Elsa’s finger, he forces her to tell him where to find the escapees. Schack catches up with Pike and Hedler at the border, but Ernst shoots him because he doesn't want Schack to mess up his human smuggling business. Ernst and Pike arrange Schack’s body to make it look as if he had been killed while trying to escape.

Safely in Switzerland, Pike and Hedler are put in separate cars. Pike is told he will be taken to the U.S. embassy, while Hedler's fate is not as certain. Hedler cries, her first display of emotion in years. In the final scene, the cars come to a fork in the road, with one turning left to the American embassy and the other veering to the right, to a refugee camp.

Cast

• James Garner as Major Jefferson F. Pike
• Eva Marie Saint as Anna Hedler
• Rod Taylor as Major Walter Gerber
• Werner Peters as Otto Schack
• John Banner as Ernst
• Russell Thorson as General Allison
• Alan Napier as Colonel Peter MacLean
• Oscar Beregi, Jr. as Lieutenant Colonel Karl Ostermann (as Oscar Beregi)
• Ed Gilbert as Captain Abbott
• Sig Ruman as a German guard
• Celia Lovsky as Elsa

Background

• D-Day was actually delayed a day because of the inclement weather, which was also a major plot point of the film Garner had made just before this one, The Americanization of Emily (1964).
• Banner's part, which provided the comedy relief in this movie, was the model for his role as another easygoing German soldier, prison guard Sgt. Schultz, in the TV series Hogan's Heroes.
• The film was remade as a 1989 TV movie Breaking Point starring Corbin Bernsen.^[3]
• The plot of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Future Imperfect" is highly reminiscent of 36 Hours.
• The plot of the Mission:Impossible episode Encore features a similar stratagem designed to convince gangster Thomas Kroll (William Shatner) that it is 1937 in order for him to divulge all that he knows about a murder he committed.
• The plot of The Prisoner episode "The Schizoid Man" features a more complex variation of the basic plotline of 36 Hours.
• In the plot of the Star Trek Enterprise episode "Stratagem", the protagonists try the same tactic as the Germans in this film.
• In the plot of the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode "Lost in Time", the villain Zorg used the same tactic as the Germans used in this film, making Buzz believe his in 1000 years in the future, to take informations about The Star Command Base.
• A 1985 two-part episode of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero entitled "There's No Place Like Springfield" shares a similar plot, in which the character Shipwreck is tricked into believing that six years have passed and COBRA has been defeated, in order for COBRA to extract a formula from his memory.

References

External links

• 36 Hours at the Internet Movie Database
• 36 Hours at AllRovi
• 36 Hours at the TCM Movie Database
• 36 Hours at Rotten Tomatoes
• James Garner Interview on the Charlie Rose Show
• James Garner interview at Archive of American Television