THE GUNS OF NAVARONE: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Columbia, 1961) Sony Home Entertainment

The cubic zirconia of all WWII-action/adventure yarns, J. Lee Thompson’s The Guns of Navarone (1961) remains a magnetic – if slightly pulpy – melodrama, loosely based on Alistair McLean’s 1957 page-turning novel. Before proceeding, it must be pointed out that the entire tale presented within this war-themed narrative is a work of pure fiction, brilliantly reconstituted by Thompson as perhaps, the peerless example of Hollywood’s ‘dream factory’ machinery, still very much alive and churning out the fantasy par excellence. Sorry folks, but the isle of Kiros, nestled in the Aegean was never a focal point for the Nazis. There were no great guns protruding from a towering buttress of stone, into which Hitler’s armies had carved a fortress, impregnable, either by land or sea. In fact, these doomsday devices were built of fiberglass and not functional – not even practical – the explosions emanating from their canons, added by special effects in post-production. Does it matter? Not really, because The Guns of Navarone remains one of the finest tales of heroism in all of its many forms ever put on the screen. The screenplay by blacklisted writer, Carl Foreman never clear cuts or white washes the reality of war and what it has done to enlisted men, fighting for a cause they may or may not believe in wholeheartedly. Even Gregory Peck’s Capt. Keith ‘the human fly’ Mallory possesses a darker, more ruthless side to his stoic forthright and purposeful demeanor – strangely unsympathetic at times, yet always flavored with Peck’s inimitable brand of manly grace to counterbalance the character’s rather cold-blooded approach to the mission.

And better still, The Guns of Navarone is arguably one of the most perfectly cast movies, its stars, hand-picked by Thompson and neatly fitted according to type. After an exhilarating prologue containing mere kernels of truth about the war, our tall tale shifts into high gear with Mallory, a staunchly determined strategist, assigned the near impossible task by his superior, Jensen (James Robertson Justice – who also serves as the narrator of the picture’s preamble) of taking a crack team of military misfits to the remote Nazi stronghold on Kiros in the Greek Isles and blow up their unassailable citadel. Indeed, Jensen’s last hope to crush the stronghold by air has proved fatal for several flyers, as squadron leader, Barnsby (Richard Harris) explains the ‘bloody awful’ situation and promising to personally toss ‘the joker’ responsible for their disastrous mission out of his plane, should he be so bold as to suggest another pass over these formidable guns. Mallory’s team includes embittered explosives expert, Cpl. Miller (David Niven), fiery and quick-witted Col. Andrea Stavros (Anthony Quinn), barbarous assassin with a knife, Brown (Stanley Baker), pragmatic Maj. Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle) and rookie solider, Pvt. Spyros Pappadimo (James Darren). Their mission is hardly foolproof, as fate is anything but on the expedition’s side.  Met near Crete by the caustic Major Baker (Allan Cuthbertson), the troop’s base of operation is compromised after Stravros catches the laundry boy, Nicolai (Tutte Lemkow) spying on them through a keyhole. Franklin orders Baker to sequester Nicolai until their mission is well under way, the alternative, to shoot both Nicolai and Baker should he refuse to take these precautionary measures.

Under these circumstances, Baker – who thinks this notion utterly absurd – complies. Camouflaging themselves aboard a dilapidated fishing trawler, Mallory and his men are intercepted by a German cruiser on the open waters where, after some initial trepidation, they make short shrift of the Nazis, murdering all aboard and sinking the vessel into silence. Franklin takes particular notice of the antagonistic relationship between Stavros and Mallory. During a hellish storm at sea, Mallory informs Franklin that through his own blunder he managed inadvertently to cause the Nazis to put to death Stavros’ wife and young son. Hence, when the expedition is over – and if they should survive it – Stavros has vowed to avenge his family by killing Mallory.  Caught in the perils of the storm, the modest trawler is dashed to pieces against the coastal rocks, with Mallory and his men left bedraggled to scale a hazardous cliff to relative safety.  Mallory goes first, and, after several nail-biting moments of vertical climbing, skillfully manages to secure a position the rest of his men can use to scale to the top. As Stavros joins Mallory topside, the two are forced to murder a German soldier.

All goes according to plan until Franklin, blinded by mud, slips on the rocks, falling several feet and breaking his leg in the process.  Assuming command of the mission, Mallory refuses to give in, give up or leave Franklin behind. Recognizing the futility of their journey, dragging a wounded man behind them, Miller encourages Mallory to shoot Franklin as, left alive, he will surely be discovered and tortured by the Nazis until he divulges the purpose of their expedition. Instead, Mallory orders his reluctant cohorts to take Franklin along. But Mallory lies to Franklin about the trajectory of their journey so, in case of capture, and, of course, under duress, Franklin will provide the enemy with false information. When Miller realizes how heartless and calculating Mallory has been, he vehemently chides him.  Meanwhile, Mallory and the troop make their way to some ancient ruins outside of Kiros where they are met by resistance fighter, Maria Pappadimos (the marvelous, Irene Papas) and her presumably mute cohort, Anna (Gia Scala). It seems Maria is Spyros’ cousin. But she has also taken an immediate shine to Stavros and makes no secret about this attraction. Anna, so Maria explains, was tortured by the Nazis and left unable to speak by the atrocities committed on her person.

Regrettably, a traitor is in their midst, one who, having leaked their whereabouts to the Nazis, now patiently awaits Mallory’s ambush at an outdoor wedding reception. Interrogated, but miraculously to escape their Nazi captors, thanks again to Stavros’ quick-witted timing, Mallory and his men regroup at some nearby ancient ruins.  There, Stavros exposes Anna as the mole, tearing off her dress to reveal no horrific wounds of torture incurred by the Nazis. Indeed, Anna – who can also speak – tearfully informs the group that their mission is hopeless.  Miller tells Mallory Anna must be shot at once and points his finger at Mallory to be her assassin. Unwilling to murder a woman, Mallory is spared this unpleasant duty when Maria coolly shoots Anna instead.  Hell, hath no fury like a Greek woman betrayed. Next, Stavros, Miller, Pappadimo and Mallory make their way to the Nazis' fortress high in the cliffs overlooking the sea. During an exchange of gunfire, Spyros and Brown are killed. But Mallory and Miller manage to infiltrate the fortress and barricade themselves within before the Germans are any the wiser. With the Nazis bearing down, Mallory and Miller rig explosive charges under the two massive guns pointed toward the sea just as an armada of Allied ships are approaching off the coast. The Nazis inadvertently set off Miller’s charges. The stronghold is demolished in a hellish ball of flame as Mallory and Miller dive into the sea to escape the deluge. They are rescued by a boat navigated by Stavros and Maria, the former, having set aside his revenge as they observe the bombed out remains of their handy work. Maria reinstates her romantic interests in Stavros and the movie, concluding on the implication they will begin an affair to mend his wounded heart, as now, their part in the resistance has come to an end.

The Guns of Navarone is an exceptional yarn, arguably, sandwiched in a spate of big-budget WWII actioners, kick-started by the Oscar-winning success of The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and followed by such epic productions as Darryl F. Zanuck’s personally supervised, The Longest Day (1962), and, John Sturges’ high-octane adventurer, The Great Escape (1963). The screenplay, adapted by Foreman (who was also the picture’s producer), makes significant changes to the novel. J. Lee Thompson was brought in after original director, Alexander Mackendrick was fired by Foreman due to ‘creative differences.’ Of the ‘dream team’ cast, only David Niven was a last-minute replacement for Kenneth More, for whom Foreman had fashioned the part of Miller. While Niven proved a valiant ‘second choice’, the actor became seriously ill while shooting the sequences in a dump tank depicting the storm at sea. Indeed, during one instance, Niven – who could not swim – was submerged for several long moments under the raging waters, held underwater by a piece of ship’s tackle. Niven’s absence, while he recuperated in hospital, delayed production and, for a brief moment, it was sincerely contemplated to recast his part, or, shoot his scenes with a double from behind. In the end, Niven recovered sufficiently to return to work, and remained an integral part of the movie, seeing it through to completion.

Shot mostly on location, on the isle of Rhodes, as well as Gozo, near Malta, and Tino, in the Ligurian Sea, the splendor of these stark surroundings had a powerful effect on Anthony Quinn, so much, he bought a considerable parcel of land on Rhodes, rechristened ‘Anthony Quinn Bay’ to this very day.  But the production hit a minor snag when it was discovered Gregory Peck could not speak a word of German, in which his character is supposed to be fluent. Instead, voice actor, Robert Rietty was hired to dub in Peck’s brief bits of German dialogue. The Guns of Navarone had six royal premieres in London and was received as a superior fable. Foreman's prose anchor the tale in its own reality, despite the historical record. We believe this movie as fact, mostly because Peck, Tony Quinn, Niven et al. sell it - not merely, as high movie art, but definitive history, as yet untold in the annals of time. The story succeeds partially because each actor has a presence sweetly familiar to the audience. We know these characters because we think we know the men behind them, and this adds yet another layer of verisimilitude to the exercise. Indeed, ‘star personalities’ go a long way here, because the script is wafer thin on character development. These are plug n’ play performers and they serve the screenplay exceptionally well. In the end, we are invested in the exploits perhaps more so than the people, but it all comes across with more than a modicum of ole-time Hollywood finesse, slickly packaged and book-ended by riveting action sequences that continue to hold up.  

The Guns of Navarone was almost lost to us, thanks to inferior storage and preservation over the years, and, inferior Pathe color/Cinemascope film stock, suffering from a perilous state of vinegar syndrome almost from the moment it was locked away inside Columbia’s vaults and left to molder with the rest of the studio’s illustrious past. For decades, The Guns of Navarone was shown on television with its opening sequence misprinted. Immediately following the credits, a plane is seen landing on a runway (shot ‘day for night’, but printed darker). During the original theatrical release of The Guns of Navarone, these planes landed at night. On television however, it always appeared as though the sequence had been shot in broad daylight. The scene, color corrected and re-timed during its meticulous restoration in the late 1990’s, nevertheless contains a ‘baked in’ major special effects error. Look closely and you will find a miniature plane, seemingly suspended in mid-air, its propellers neither turning, nor the craft itself actually moving across the screen. Odd no one caught this during post-production. Odder still that the movie should earn an Oscar for best visual effects! In the mid-1990's, Columbia Pictures contacted UCLA restoration expert, Robert Gitt to aid in a last-ditch restoration, accomplished without the added benefit of a digital frame-by-frame cleanup. The results, while light years ahead of anything the picture had looked like since 1961, were nevertheless not up to snuff. In 1999, Columbia released The Guns of Navarone to DVD in what remained a less than stellar incarnation, with bumped contrast, faded, oft overly pink flesh tones, anemic colors, and, much shimmering of fine details. A goodly sum of these flaws is inherent in the archival elements, and, prior to the wizardry of digital restoration, proved impossible to correct using standard photo-chemical techniques. Then, in 2011, Sony Home Video remastered the movie yet again, this time in 1080p for Blu-ray. Now, we have the 4K UHD incarnation. Given the titanic advancements in digital restoration and film preservation since 2011, does any of this quantify to actual tangible improvements in ultra-hi-def for a movie whose original elements have been fed through the meat grinder for prior decades? To clarify, The Guns of Navarone can never look pristine. Decades of neglect, poor processing, the complexities of the ill-achieved Pathe color, and ‘scope’s inherent shortcomings with amplified grain levels have all conspired against achieving ‘perfection’ for this movie classic. Mercifully, Sony has gone back to the drawing board on surviving first generation Cinemascope elements (the original camera negative no longer exists), and the results are mostly successful here and certainly rate a noticeable step-up from the 2011 Blu-ray.

A handful of shots still remain in very rough shape indeed, like the moment Franklin and his men arrive on Crete. Here, the image, momentarily fraught with a thickening haze and over-exaggerated grain, distorted and wan colors, and a barrage of age-related artifacts that render the image grain-intensive and ugly. Day for night photography too remains highly problematic, suffering from anemic contrast and a persistent dullness to obfuscate fine detail. Outdoor scenes, particularly those shot in the full aperture of day light, however, now prove a minor revelation. Flesh tones that once appeared chalky orange have been brought into line and are consistently rendered. Colors are, at times, striking. The ambush at the Greek wedding, previously to appear as though its white stucco façades had been tainted by smoker’s cough, now appear to glisten white and are, in fact, pristine, offset by some gorgeous, green foliage. Gia Scala's piercing eyes now register a sublime coral blue. Depending on one’s point of view, visually, The Guns of Navarone in 4K either leaves a great deal to be desired or is a minor revelation, especially when considering how close we came to losing this movie forever. So, kudos to Sony for this latest resurrection.

Sony has also done absolute wonders with the original 4-track stereo mix, herein represented in both its original format and, remastered in 7.1 Dolby Atmos, to sweeten the sound field in subtly nuanced ways. On the 4K, we get a new main title progression reel and theatrical trailer. I am perplexed why the audio commentary featured on Sony’s old Blu-ray did not make the leap to 4K. Mercifully, it is on the Blu-ray edition also included in this package. To be clear, the Blu-ray is identical to the 2011 release. Sony has not gone the extra step to transfer the new 4K remaster to standard hi-def. The rest of the extras, including the Resistance Dossier, Lee J. Thompson’s audio commentary, 3 documentaries produced exclusively in 2011, plus vintage featurettes are on the Blu-ray – NOT the 4K. Bottom line: while many movies in 4K sport revitalized picture and sound quality unseen since arguably their theatrical debut, the improvements made to The Guns of Navarone, while noteworthy, denote a subtler achievement for the UHD format. You really have to search for them. But if you are a fan – this one is a no-brainer must have/must own. Just don’t expect the ‘wow’ factor to hit your screens. Highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

3