36 Hours (1964)

Don't Believe the Hype

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Certainly Offbeat and Effortlessly took the Turn of the Sixties Sensationalistic Psychological Spying, ala James Bond, and Delivered this Intriguing Intelligence interplay between the Nazis and Allies.It has the Sensibilities of that Era and Foreshadowed such Things as TV's The Prisoner and has the Tone of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Lite. It does Stand on its Own as a Nifty Little Thriller that does what it can to make the Improbable seem (Mission) Impossible.The Cast is Acceptable if not Strikingly on the Money, this was a Difficult Thing to Pull Off, but for the Most Part it Works. There is a Lack of Energy and Excitement with the Overt Thrills Saved for the End when it does Open Up a bit. Overall it is a Successful Film and while not Great, does Manage to be Entertaining and Edge of Your Seat Enough to make it well Worth a Watch.

Very good film with Jim Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Rod Taylor in basically a cat and mouse game.Garner is captured by the Nazis and is made to believe that he is an amnesia victim who has had his memory restored in the year 1950.The movie does lose some of it potency once Garner discovers the ruse.The film then becomes one of the Nazis not believing Garner when he had send that the allied invasion would occur at Normandy. Ms. Marie-Saint plays a nurse, who had been released from a concentration camp so that she could participate in the duping of Garner. She is very good in the part as she evokes the facade of a concentration camp survivor.Also excellent is Rod Taylor as the German doctor, American born, he went to live in Germany at age 16. You do wonder though why he ever fell in with the Nazi movement.

George Seaton was a Hollywood A-level writer and director who could tell a story efficiently and professionally. He also knew movies had to sell tickets to be successful. He kept that in mind while creating, often with William Perlberg as producer, movies that were satisfyingly A caliber and watchable, even when they were serious by Hollywood standards. He didn't mind threading in irony or even a message or two, but usually these were plot driven. Seaton, in other words, knew his way around. And so we have 36 Hours. It's not about the terrible conflicts of wartime exigencies as The Counterfeit Traitor is. It's not a sad, uncomfortable story of love and sacrifice that The Country Girl is. And it's certainly not a bit of romantic fluff as Teacher's Pet is. 36 Hours is a fine, efficient, wartime yarn, nothing more, nothing less...and that, for me, is good enough. Major Jefferson Pike (James Garner) is an Allied intelligence officer who has been flying between London and Lisbon to pick up information from a clerk in the German embassy. It's May 31, 1944. Pike is ordered to make one more flight...and the success of the Allied invasion only days away may hang in the balance. Hitler is convinced the invasion will take place in the Pas de Calais region. The Allies are doing everything possible to the keep the real location at Normandy from leaking out. The Germans, of course, are doing every thing they can to either confirm Pas de Calais or learn the real location. German agents, with Pike now in Lisbon, slip him a mickey. When he wakes up he's in a U. S. Army hospital in Germany. It's May 15, 1950. His American doctor (Rod Taylor) tells him he's been in a coma for six years. Germany lost and the Allies occupy the country. Wilkie is President. Former president Roosevelt is recuperating again at Warm Springs, Georgia. G.I. patients greet Pike by name. U. S. doctors aid his recovery. And now that the war is won, there's no secret about where in France the Allies actually invaded six years earlier. So tell us about it, they ask Pike. Pike's doctor, of course, is a German. Major Walter Gerber (Rod Taylor) is a skilled psychologist. The "U. S. military hospital" is a phony, a carefully prepared installation near the Swiss border where everyone -- patients, doctors, nurses -- are Germans carefully selected for their flawless English. And speaking of nurses, Pike's nurse, Anna Hedler (Eva Marie Saint), is introduced as his wife. Gerber has organized all this in a life-or-death gamble. He must convince Pike -- within 36 hours -- to volunteer the location of the invasion of France. Gerber, however, has someone watching over his shoulder. Otto Schack, a Gestapo interrogator, is equally convinced the experiment will fail. He is pressing to use the proved methods of Gestapo interrogation. All this makes for an intriguing and clever, if unlikely, con. But it works. We sure outfoxed the Germans with Normandy, Pike says, and gives the details with pride. But then Pike notices a small paper cut on his hand which is barely healed...a paper cut he now remembers getting two days ago in London. He realizes what must be happening. The con game now becomes a deadly cat and mouse game. Somehow he must convince Gerber and Schack that he knew what was going on all along and had conned them into thinking he had deliberately misled them away from the Pas de Calais. The last third of the movie -- now with the Germans conned thanks in part to lousy weather on June 5 -- becomes a race for Pike to save his skin. Can Pike escape and make it across the border to Switzerland? Will Gerber prove he's a good German and help? And will Pike take with him Anna, a woman who was forced into her role by threats to return her to Ravensbruck? Garner serves up a puzzled, troubled man who finally figures out the score. Taylor gives us a dedicated German who, however uneasily, realizes his "experiment" has personal costs he didn't bargain on. Saint does a fine job in a role that doesn't give much latitude. And John Banner, as an aging, fat German Home Guard sergeant who shows up during the movie's last 15 minutes, nearly steals the show. Weak spots? Otto Schack. He's just an old-style Hollywood Gestapo man, slimy and opportunistic. Seaton also gives both Saint and Taylor turgid opportunities to reflect on their past and, in Gerber's case, his good motives. And as professional and experienced a screenwriter as Seaton was, the movie at nearly two hours could use some trimming. Still, 36 hours is just what it is, a good war yarn built around a clever double con. We should count our blessings.

Of some movies it's just amazing to see how unknown and under-appreciated they are. "36 Hours" should had been a classic movie by now, since it has all the right ingredients for it in it but it yet remains a fairly unknown WW II thriller, despite it's great cast and writers involved.What makes this movie so great is how incredibly and refreshing original this movie is, though in the end the movie does become a bit too formulaic. The concept of the movie is great thriller material. A couple of days before D-Day, an American major is captured by the Germans during World War II. They attempt to brainwash him into believing that years have past and the war is over and that he is safe in an Allied hospital, so that he will tell about the Allied invasion plans, involving the Normandy invasion, as if they have happened in the past time. It's a real psychological thriller, that due to its story also has a certain unpleasant and unreal science-fiction like atmosphere all over it. The movie has some great and solid thriller moments in it, that makes this movie an unforgettable one and an extremely underrated one in its genre. It's sort of too bad that in the end the movie gets overwritten, by leaving its original concept and turning into a more formulaic WW II thriller genre movie, that tries to look more clever and complicated than it in fact really is. The movie could had definitely- and perhaps also should had been 20 minutes shorter and should had ended earlier. It downgrades the movie but definitely not enough to prevent this movie from being a great and original one.The movie has a great thriller build up. featuring lots of spy elements in it. It's psychological, while the second halve turns into more physical, which is also one of the reasons why the second halve of the movie does not works as good as the first. It isn't the fastest going movie, like we're accustomed to from '60's movies. Not that it matters though. The movie is good and tense enough to keep your interest for its entire running time, without ever looking at the clock.It was a good choice that the movie was filmed entirely in atmospheric black & white. It gives the movie a more authentic feeling, as well as a unpleasant and almost alien like feeling. Luckily the movie also features some well placed and refreshing humor, to keep things light and also provide the movie with a certain entertainment-level.James Garner is good and also believable in his role. He also shares some good screen time with Rod Taylor who also gives a good performance and plays an unpredictable character. Really great in her role was Eva Marie Saint, one year before she and James Garner would team up again for "Grand Prix". She plays a great and strong female character. Really not that many actresses around in the '60's to play a role like that and do it so believable as she did. It definitely makes Eva Marie Saint one of the best actresses of her generation. Let's hope that "Superman Returns" won't be her last role. Werner Peters also plays a good stereotypical like SS-officer, who in a way is the comical note of the movie, though in the end his character turns more and more evil.A movie most definitely worth seeing, if you get the chance to.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/