The Guns of Navarone

The Guns of Navarone (1961)

Timing: 2:38 (158 min)

7.311/10
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7.16/10
1812

7.5/10
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All about film

Video 1

Photo 56

Actors and characters

Release date

1961-04-27

Country

United Kingdom, United States

Production

Columbia Pictures, Highroad Productions

Genre

War, Action, Adventure, Thriller

Budget

$6 000 000

Revenue

$28 900 000

Website

Director

J. Lee Thompson

Actors

Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Darren, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, James Robertson Justice, Richard Harris
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Carl Foreman

Operator

Oswald Morris

Composer

Dimitri Tiomkin

Artist

Audition

Editing

Alan Osbiston
All team (42)

• The film is based on the novel of the same name by Alistair MacLean, who also wrote the screenplay.
• The film was shot on one of the Greek islands – Symi – near Rhodes.
• The trash metal band Channel Zero has a song of the same name, “Guns of Navarone”.
• One of the Rhodes locations used in the film was renamed “Anthony Quinn Bay” after the actor Anthony Quinn purchased property nearby.
• The only time David Niven ever smoked cigarettes on screen.
• It is mistakenly believed that the island's guns were those from the dismantled Russian battleship "Volya" of the "Empress Maria" type. After the revolution, this ship was taken to the French port of Bizerte and, after a long lay-up, was sold for scrap. Its 305mm guns were shipped by cargo steamer to Finland during World War II, but were intercepted by the Germans, repaired, and installed as part of the "Atlantic Wall" as coastal artillery. In reality, the film used 283mm guns from the German battleship "Gneisenau", removed after damage sustained in 1942 and used to create a coastal battery near Rosenburg (Hoek van Holland area) in single LC/37-type turrets.
• The climax of the film (the destruction of the gun casemate) was used by George Lucas in his film "Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi" (1983), in the episode of the rebels capturing the shield control center of the Death Star 2. Many details coincide – the appearance of the armored gates, the special form of the German artillerymen (like the stormtroopers in "Star Wars"), the fleet coming under fire ("all back, the field is not disabled!"), and the final explosion.