Force 10 from Navarone is a 1978 war film very loosely based on upon Alistair MacLean's 1968 novel Force 10 From Navarone.
The film is also a sequel to the award-winning 1961 film The Guns of Navarone, but this time the parts of Mallory and Miller are played by Robert Shaw and Edward Fox. It was directed by Guy Hamilton and also stars Harrison Ford, Carl Weathers, Barbara Bach, Franco Nero and Richard Kiel.
Shaw's portrayal of Mallory differs from both MacLean's literary character and Gregory Peck's portrayal in Guns, being a slightly older, more thoughtful strategist rather than the almost superhuman man of action which commonly characterized MacLean's protagonists.
The film was a critical and commercial failure and was lightly disliked by Ford himself, but it later gained a cult following among the fans of the "war" genre.
Plot
Some time after the successful Navarone mission, Mallory (Robert Shaw) and Miller (Edward Fox) are summoned by Commander Jensen (Philip Latham) and charged with identifying and killing a spy known as "Nicolai", who appeared briefly in The Guns of Navarone. (In the film The Guns of Navarone, Nicolai was the identity of the laundry boy who was suspected to be listening in on private conversations and almost got killed for it). "Nicolai" is now thought to be disguised among the Yugoslav Partisans, under the guise of a Captain Lescovar (Franco Nero).
To get to Yugoslavia the two men are paired up with "Force 10", a sabotage unit led by Lt. Colonel Barnsby (Harrison Ford), whose target is later revealed to be a key bridge. In order to ensure absolute secrecy, Force 10 steal an Allied plane from an airfield in Termoli so that no information about their flight to Yugoslavia can be leaked out. Miller, an explosives expert, carries various explosives in a suitcase. While breaching the perimeter fence, they are discovered by US M.P.s who are escorting Sergeant Weaver (Carl Weathers) to captivity. A brawl ensues which ends with the M.P.s overpowered and Weaver forcing his way onto the plane. After crossing the Yugoslavian coast, the plane is attacked by German night fighters, at which point most of Barnsby's team are killed and the survivors have to bail out of the stricken aircraft.
The remainder of the team attempts to link up with the Communist Yugoslav Partisans (who were part of the Allied forces) and believe they have run across a group of such led by a Captain Drazak (Richard Kiel). Once at Drazak's camp, they learn that these are not Partisans but a group of collaborationist Chetniks (nationalist Serb guerillas) operating under control of the Germans. Now in German custody, Mallory and Barnsby attempt to convince the commander, Major Schroeder (Michael Byrne), that they are black marketeers who have escaped from Allied captivity with a valuable stash of a new wonder drug called penicillin, which Miller is supposedly carrying in his explosives suitcase. Schroeder is initially skeptical, but with intelligence confirmation of the aircraft theft, he is not ready to disbelieve it entirely.
Despite Mallory's advice against opening up the suitcase - because it might ruin their samples of penicillin - Schroeder does so. To surprise of everyone, Schroeder finds the suitcase full of firewood. Mallory and Barnsby quickly improvise - claiming they buried their samples before meeting Drazak. Schroeder decides to send the pair to retrieve the penicillin under the guard of his female concubine Maritza (Barbara Bach), and three of his soldiers. Miller, Weaver and Reynolds (Angus MacInnes) are meanwhile left to languish in the cell block within the camp.
Once outside of the camp, Maritza kills the Germans, revealing herself to be a Partisan spy and the person responsible for hiding Miller's explosives. She gives them directions towards the Partisans under the command of Maj. Petrovich (Alan Badel), her father. Mallory and Barnsby escape, ambushing and killing two of Drazak's Chetniks - men bandaged to hide horrible burns received from flamethrowers. Eventually, the two meet up with a patrol of real Yugoslav Partisans. Mallory immediately recognises the leader of the patrol, Captain Lescovar, as Nicolai. While Mallory assumes that Lescovar has recognised him, they are nevertheless taken to the partisans. Blindfolded for much of their journey, both Mallory and Barnsby realize their location when they recognize a wide river and a large hydroelectric dam astride it near the Partisan camp.
Major Petrovich dismisses Mallory's story about Captain Lescovar being the spy Nicolai - assuring Mallory that they had already identified and executed real 'Nicolai'. Petrovich also angrily reproves the men for killing the bandaged Chetniks, as the men were actually Partisans and the only link between Petrovich and Maritza.
Much of Petrovich's anger stems from an impending German armored assault being prepared on the opposite side of a huge suspension bridge which crosses a wide ravine between German-controlled and Partisan-held territory. The bridge is a critical part of the Germans' campaign to complete their control of that region, but after repeated and costly attempts to destroy it have failed, Petrovich has decided the bridge is practically impregnable. With at least three divisions, the German victory over Petrovich's brigade is a virtual certainty. Telling Petrovich of Miller's expertise in demolitions, Mallory narrowly convinces the Partisan to allow a rescue mission using Lescovar and the Partisan Marko (Petar Buntic).
The four men manage to re-enter the camp at night, with Mallory and Barnsby posing as the captives, while the partisans disguise themselves as the bandaged men. Before they can complete their mission, Drazak arrives with the bodies of the real bandaged men. Seeing that they had no burns, Drazak realizes that the men had actually been partisans and, since Maritza had always been seen with them, concludes that she was a partisan as well. A short gun battle breaks out in the cell block, killing Schroeder and Reynolds in the process, but before Drazak arrives, Mallory, Barnsby, Miller, Weaver, Lescovar and Marko manage to escape in a truck, rescuing the badly beaten Maritza on the way.
Having made it back to the Partisans, Miller gives Barnsby and Mallory the bad news - the bridge really is impregnable to explosives. (While Barnsby's engineers had assured him that the bridge could be destroyed, Miller explains that the engineers' expertise is limited to building things, while his expertise is destroying things.) While explosives won't destroy the bridge, a wave of "several million tons of water" might do the trick on the bridge's central arch - and the men realize that their real target isn't the bridge, but the nearby dam (the dam being a much easier target). A night time air drop is arranged to replace Force 10's lost supplies, which Lescovar sabotages by calling in German planes to bomb the illuminated landing zone and killing Maritza when she discovers him.
This is the last straw for Petrovich, and he decides to send the men to Marshall Tito's headquarters where transport back to Italy can be arranged. The team decides with Lescovar's help to go instead to the German marshalling yards at Mostar, where they can get all the explosives they need. After successfully infiltrating the supply area, and thinking the others don't notice, Lescovar again betrays them by revealing himself to a German sergeant as a German intelligence officer, Colonel Von Ingorslebon, Special Field Intelligence Group - ordering the sergeant to prepare a squad to capture Barnsby and Mallory. Marko overhears the plan and guns down the platoon just as they move in, at the cost of his own life. The others escape with Lescovar aboard a supply train leaving the yards for Sarajevo. Lescovar's hastily constructed cover story doesn't fool Barnsby or Mallory - they saw the German Sergeant in Mostar salute Lescovar even though Lescovar was only disguised as a Corporal); also, Lescovar knew that their train went to Sarajevo, but didn't mention that it passed within a half-mile of the dam. Mallory admits he always knew that Lescovar really was the Nicolai he'd been sent to eliminate, only that he couldbn't prove it - and Barnsby kills him.
Jumping the train near the dam, the team splits up. Miller and Weaver set off some diversionary explosives while Mallory and Barnsby to sneak into the dam. Weaver runs into Drazak in the woods and, though being seriously wounded, kills the Chetnik.
Mallory and Barnsby head deep down into the tunnels within the dam and set the charges. Knowing that the Germans will cross the bridge at dawn, they are forced to set a short fuse on the explosives - too short to allow them time to escape. With no illusions about their chances for survival, the two walk away slowly when the bomb explodes. Mallory and Barnsby nevertheless survive, but are dismayed to realize that the dam is also apparently undamaged. Soon however cracks open up in the tunnels and water starts spilling in. With its barely maintained structural integrity disrupted, the dam wall collapses, millions of tons of water cascading from it. At the bridge, the Germans are starting to cross with their armour when the gigantic wall of water comes down the ravine and topples the bridge. The German assault is thwarted, saving the jubilant Partisans.
For Mallory and Barnsby, once rejoining Miller and Weaver, the jubilation is short-lived. Mallory reminds them that they're now trapped on the wrong side of the river, that they have no hopes of reaching the Partisans, that the ground they're standing on is soon to be "crawling with bad-tempered Germans" and that Miller's suitcase probably doesn't even have a box of matches. As the credits start to roll, the men wearily begin their very long walk home.
Cast
Controversies
One controversial aspect of the film and, for that matter, Alastair MacLean's novel (and a later novel of his called Partisans), is its portrayal of Serbian Chetniks as German allies in Bosnia. While there were forces of Chetniks which were allied to the German occupation forces most Chetniks fought against the German occupiers and were aligned with the overthrown monarchy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, opposing the fascist Independent State of Croatia. Many Chetniks who did ally with the Germans were extremists who associated with the fascist ZBOR party in Serbia and supporters of the Serbian civil administration of Milan Nedic in the Military Administration in Serbia who allied with Hitler and was later overthrown in a coup carried out by the British. Other Chetniks who initially allied with the Americans and British later switched sides and helped the Germans in Yugoslavia in hopes of destroying the Yugoslav Partisans (made up of Croats, Bosnians and Serbs) after the Americans and British withdrew support from the Chetniks, seeing them as unreliable allies.
The premise of the story, that it would require a demolitions expert to be specifically sent in to destroy one bridge, is unusual to say the least. We are shown the occupying and resisting forces engaged in an extended battle over the bridge, which was not the sort of warfare practiced in occupied Yugoslavia.
Critical history
This film was not initially a theatrical success, neither critically nor at the box-office. The production notes on the Region 1 DVD state that the budget was $10 million, while the film only grossed $7.2 million on its US theatrical run. The plot differed from the novel in many respects, besides the name and the team's objective of blowing up a bridge. At year end 2006 the film has grossed in excess of $25,000,000.
Film facts
According to his book The Light's on at Signpost, George MacDonald Fraser claims that he wrote the screenplay to the film.
The finale cost $1 million to film. Scale models of the dam, the valley and the bridge were constructed at the Mediterranean Film Studios in Malta, which as of 2007 still houses the largest outdoor water tanks in Europe. The location of the real bridge was the Đurđevića Tara Bridge, Montenegro.[1]
Composer Ron Goodwin scored the film to the 126 minutes version during the summer of 1978. Before the film was released it was altered and shortened to 118 minsutes by American International Pictures, who held the US distribution rights. The opening narration by Patrick Allen was replaced by an American voice with totally different dialogue, some scenes were deleted or shortened and the film was littered with jarring dubbed dialogue (usually when the character is off camera, or has his back to us). Robert Shaw had died before these alterations were made, and a voice impersonator was used. Consequently, his character's dubbed lines stand out particularly badly.
Along with all these other changes, an additional number of music cues were created by recycling Ron Goodwin's music from other parts of the film - typically reusing suspense passages in scenes for which they were not written - leaving the score sounding rather incoherent. The recent CD release of the soundtrack by Film Score Monthly chronicles these changes, and presents the score as Ron Goodwin wrote and recorded it for the 126 minute version.
The 118 minute cut was subsequently the version that was also released worldwide theatrically by Columbia Pictures, which had released the film to which Force 10 is a sequel, The Guns of Navarone. While Columbia held on to international rights, the U.S. rights would pass to Orion Pictures in 1982 after buying Filmways and American International Pictures. Orion was in turn sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1998. Ironically, MGM itself was sold to a consortium led by Columbia's then parent Sony in 2005, and so Columbia holds some ancillary rights in the U.S. today, including theatrical rights.
The producers of the film Carl Foreman, Sidney Cohn and Oliver Unger are now deceased. The sole surviving producer, Peter Gettinger, has been in litigation with Columbia Pictures, and a subsidiary of HSBC, since 1996. Until May 2007, when the producers settled with the subsidiary, the producers had not received any proceeds from the distribution of the film. Columbia is still withholding a great deal of the proceeds pending litigation. A trial was held May 2007 in the N.Y. Supreme Court. Judge Cahn rendered a decision on May 29, 2008 stating that the producers were entitled to the funds withheld by Columbia Pictures: "parties entered into a scheme to defraud both Sony and Columbia into wrongfully paying them, and deprived the Navarone company of monies and payments due to them. As to the issue tried to the hearing - who is entitled to the monies held by Sony, and to future distribution - the answer is clear: its the plaintiff - Navarone Productions, N.V." [2]
As of August 25, 2008, Sony has not turned over the withheld monies.
Although Force Ten From Navarone was rated PG, it contains female nudity and the decapitation of a German soldier.
References
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