The 25th Hour (film)
The 25th Hour (La Vingt-cinquième Heure) | |
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Directed by | Henri Verneuil |
Written by | François Boyeur Wolf Mankowitz Henri Verneuil |
Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
Starring | Anthony Quinn Virna Lisi |
Cinematography | Andreas Winding |
Music by | Georges Delerue Maurice Jarre |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates |
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Running time | 196 minutes (Europe) |
Countries | France Italy Yugoslavia |
Languages | French English Romanian |
The 25th Hour (
Plot
In a small
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu. The storyline includes Hungary's alliance with Nazi Germany, the forced cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequent events in Central Europe during and after World War II.
Cast
- Anthony Quinn as Johann Moritz
- Virna Lisi as Suzanna Moritz
- Serge Reggiani as Traïan Koruga
- Grégoire Aslan as Nicolai Dobresco
- Michael Redgrave as defence lawyer
- Marcel Dalio as Strul (as Dalio)
- Jan Werich as Sgt. Constantin
- Marius Goring as Oberst Müller
- Alexander Knox as Prosecutor
- Liam Redmond as Father Koruga
- Meier Tzelniker as Abramovici
- Kenneth J. Warren as Inspector Varga
- John Le Mesurier as Tribunal president
- Jacques Marin as the soldier at Debresco
- Françoise Rosay as Mrs. Nagy
- Paul Pavel as a prisoner in the truck
- Jacques Préboist as a prisoner in the truck
- Jean Desailly as the minister's chief of staff
- Albert Rémy as Joseph Grenier
- Jacques Marbeuf as the German officer
- Robert Beatty as Colonel Greenfield
- Harold Goldblatt as Isaac Nagy
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther panned The 25th Hour as "... such a tasteless and pointless hodgepodge of deadly serious and crudely comic elements, of tragic historical allusions grossly garbled in specious movie terms, that it looms large as one of the most disreputable and embarrassing films in recent years ..." Crowther was especially critical of Anthony Quinn's character and performance: "... [T]here is no real continuity or real sincerity in the nature of the man. He ranges from an image of the poignant victim to one of a genial simpleton. And in all his shuddering misadventures, so darkly shadowed by the facts of history, he manifests no awareness of relation to the suffering of others or even a point of view. The only philosophical reaction registered by Mr. Quinn—or provided by his script writers—is one of confusion that this is happening to him. The impression transmitted by all this is one of utter insensitivity."[5]
Los Angeles Times film critic Philip K. Scheuer wrote: "One has to keep telling oneself what a good actor Anthony Quinn is in order to sustain interest ... For this odyssey of a wandering non-Jew takes up to 2 1/4 hours to say what it has to say, and even this doesn't add up to much which is new ..."[6]
References
- ^ "La 25e Heure (1967)". BFI. Archived from the original on November 21, 2017.
- ^ "The 25th Hour (1967) - Articles - TCM.com". Turner Classic Movies.
- ^ "C. Virgil Gheorghiu; Romanian Author, 75". The New York Times. June 24, 1992 – via NYTimes.com.
- ^ "La Vingt-Cinquième Heure (1967) - Henri Verneuil | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related". AllMovie.
- ^ Crowther, Bosley (1967-02-17). "The Screen: A Tasteless and Pointless '25th Hour'". The New York Times. p. 45.
- ^ Scheuer, Philip K. (1967-02-03). "Quinn Carries Day in an Endless 'Hour'". Los Angeles Times. p. 9 (Part IV).
External links
- The 25th Hour at IMDb
- The 25th Hour at the TCM Movie Database
- La Vingt-Cinquième Heure at AllMovie