Posts from itdo in thread „The Guns Of Navarrone“

BTW, you won't find an island called Navarone (or Navarrone, for that matter ) on the Greek map. But if you ever take a trip to Rhodes, take a better look: They still call one of the shooting locations the "Anthony Quinn Bay" today. The beautiful old city was the background for the castle scenes.

"Guns" won the Oscar for Best Special Effects.

As for the anti-war comments in the film: When it first came out, it was something completely new, actually the start of a new warfilm-subgenre: the "commando"-film which was en vogue thereafter. We might look at it differently today because so many others came along after that, a strong anti-military-film like Dirty Dozen might not have been made without "Guns" showing the way. It's really a bunch of subordinent specialists who aren't so much interested in the outcome of the war but in their personal matters: THAT's what was new then. Before that, Hollywood hat created the so-called "unit"-film, which was a propaganda product during the war: it always dealt with an unit and teamwork for the higher goal. Something the commando film completely lacks.

In the Fifties, Foreman couldn't have made the same film with the same dialogue in Hollywood. I don't remember MacLean's novels, both "Guns" and the sequel, being that anti-military, just strong, simple hero-stories. Foreman added the critical elements. The one line in "Guns", spoken by Peck on the boat, changed the direction of war-films, about having to be as nasty as the enemy to win, but: What happens when we wake up one morning and find out we're even nastier than the enemy?