Movie – Night of the generals

Movie – Night of the generals

Score : 3/10 

Year : 1967 

Director:  Anatole Litvak 

Cinematography: Henri Decaë

Country: UK & France co-production

Language: English. (some German, French, and apparently also Italian & Spanish)

Duration: 2h18 (and far too long for it) 

IMDB announces even 2h28 

Writers: 

Joseph Kessel & Paul Dehn (adapted for screen) ; Paul Dehn (additional dialogues) ; 

Hans Hellmut Kirst (novel) ; (based on incident written by) James Hadley Chase 

When I first borrowed this movie in our local library, I had high expectations. the casting announced Peter O'toole, Omar Sharif & Donald Pleasence. 

I just watched it and have to say that I was quite let down and don't understand IMDB's medium note of 7.3/10 

Let me tell you, this is not on the fault of the actors themselves ; they each played they roles well ; however, the casting relies mostly on British actors playing German officers - just like Omar Sharif. Really, an Egyptian playing a German. 

Let le tell you very quickly about the main plot : it starts in Warsaw, 1942, when a Polish prostitute is found murdered. That night, several generals had no alibi and are all suspected for the murder. 

Let's resume the negative critic: 

Cinematography is banal ; only two scenes stand out : the opening sequence, which my wife liked but I didn't care for, and another one when two characters drive through streets of Paris. 

This is a man's-man movie, with very rare female characters ; fashion, hair-does (totally wrong for the area, especially for the rare women).

Maurice Jarre's musical score is abominable and sound quality was so bad, many dialogues seems to have been re-dubbed, with at least one error that I noted regarding the time-lines of this multi-period movie (set in 1942-44 & mid 60's, yet, at some point someone mentions facts from 33 years earlier, instead of 23.)

Lips and audible dialogues lose synch on several occasions. 

Speaking off, this multi-period is done with at least 3 time jumps between the 1940's & 60's ; this aspect is made further worse with narration. 

A few characters exist in both periods, and are very badly aged (bad make-up and such). 

The movie follows too many plots, as if no one was sure on what they wanted to concentrate. This is quite detrimental, as we had almost stopped it on several occasions and that now that we finished, know we won't watch it again. 

Confusing storytelling, and some aspects are far too evident. 

The only good aspects relies on the acting, especially by Tom Courtenay, Donald Pleasence & Peter O'Toole. 

Note with them also :

Charles Gray (Mycroft in 1984's BBC Sherlock) ; Gordon Jackson (Crowly, in the Professionals tv-series) ; Christopher Plummer.

For full cast IMDB

PS : you see, many people worked on writing, adapting from one to the other. I don't know anything about the incident, nor novel that it inspired, but this can explain the confusion regarding mix of fiction and history (WWII related).