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Amazon.co.uk Review
On the DVD: This special-edition DVD gives the modern-day viewer a taste of what movies were like in 1961. Four curious featurettes are included, produced as publicity for the film. James Darren narrates a little ditty at his honeymoon in Malta during filming; Irene Papas narrates a giddy, old-fashioned look at "Two Girls on the Town". There is even a filmed bit with producer-writer Carl Foreman that was shown once at the premiere. The 30-minute retrospective, "Memories of Navarone", made in 1999 has the expected reminiscences from Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn. Director J. Lee Thompson's audio commentary is a bit frustrating; he's now in his 80s, and most of his recollections are slow in coming. A historian could have brought out the film's history (it was the most expensive movie ever made at time of release) and produced a more vital viewing. --Doug Thomas
Video Description
Director's commentary
Featurettes -- "A Message from Carl Foreman", "Great Guns", "Honeymoon on Rhodes", "No Visitors",
Two Girls on the Town"
Filmographies
"Memories of Navarone" Documentary
Theatrical Trailer
Interactive Menus
Dolby Digital 5.1
Widescreen 1:2.35 enhanced for 16:9 TVs
Languages -- English, French, German
Subtitles -- English, French, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Hindi,
Turkish, Danish, Arabic, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Dutch, Norwegian,
Greek, Hebrew, Bulgarian.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An all time classic,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Guns of Navarone [DVD] (DVD)
Gregory Peck plays Mallory, the worlds greatest living mountaineer, linguist and commandoe, picked along with Anthony Quin, to escort a group of sabotuers onto Navarone, where terrifying anti-shipping guns are impeding the rescue of a British garrison. When the vessel sinks in a storm, Mallory is compelled by fate to join and ultimately lead the deadly mission, stirring stuff indeed and highly enjoyable to boot. All of the characters are flawed in that wonderful Great Escape way. Instead of a claustrophobic miner, we get the knief man who's lost his taste for killing. No blind forger hear but a man who's closest comrade will kill him at the end of the war. There's good Germans and bad Germans, a traitor in the camp, Anthony Quayle with gangreen, romance and a surprise ending(well sort of). My personal favourite is where Messrs. Peck and Niven appear to share a cigarette of dubious nature in the closing moments of the film!This film is a classic, and has always been well regarded, but is it worth buying on DVD? Now to be fair this movie is long in the tooth, and has long been the staple fair of Sunday matinees and video-store bargain bins. So is it worth forking out for? Simple answer:yes! Long answer: Aside from a great tranfer, where the day-for-night shots are printed as night,its in widescreen, with Dolby digital sound! To boot, there is a plethora of extras. Not many forty year old movies come with a directors' commentary, but this does. As J. Lee Thompson was a studio gun-for-hire, this was just another job rather than a personal obsession, so dont expect great personal insights. For me the real goodies are the bizarre promo films thrown in for good measure. Publicity films date faster than calenders and theses are excellently silly, fun, pathe style newsreels. Worth a look if only to see Peck playing football with war-orphans in Nazi regalia, and check out the gals shopping. This is capped with an indepth making of, based around lenghty interviews with Peck, Quin and Thompson. Some great personal reflections. Fans of this movie will need not my recommendation, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and all the bonus material. Two thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Comprehensive extras, but restoration is only partially successful,
By
This review is from: The Guns Of Navarone (Special Edition) [DVD] [2007] (DVD)
I won't say too much about the film itself, which is approaching 50 years old, except to say that the performances of all the cast appearing in this well executed WWII thriller are extremely high quality. Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck and David Niven in particular really do act their socks off (Stanley Baker also stands out, despite having less to work with). The actors are helped greatly by a fine script, which only lets itself down during the first 15 minutes with some rather naive moralising from James Robertson Justice, and a shocking "cameo" from Richard Harris, complete with badly judged Australian accent (and some pretty flowery language for the period). However, when the plot starts rolling the combination of excellent dialogue and scorching acting make it very difficult to take your eyes of the screen. In fact, the action scenes struggle to compete with all this finely crafted drama.
It's always good when a classic like this receives a 2 disc special edition, and there's a wonderfully exhaustive library of Documentaries and period Featurettes on the second disc. It was very enjoyable to hear Peck and Quinn reminisce of their time on what appears to have been a happy set, what a shame many of the rest of the cast are no longer with us to share their thoughts. Interestingly, one of the docs concerns the restoration of the film. I was actually very disappointed with this transfer of The Guns of Navarone, which I thought was grubby, much too grainy, rather gloomy, and also suffered from poor colour and contrast. I've recently seen Ice Station Zebra and Where Eagles Dare on DVD (two other MacLean thrillers from the sixties), and although they've not received a restoration to my knowledge, image quality is strong. The Bond films of the era have of course received stunning restorations using the Lowry digital process, and look wonderful. It is certainly obvious from the doc that a lot of work was done; an improvement is noticeable when comparisons are shown, and they have also corrected a long standing error at the beginning of the film regarding night-time shooting. The doc also makes it clear that the original print was in a very sorry condition. However, I'm not convinced that the restoration has gone far enough. The new Dolby 5.1 soundtrack is a great success though, with clear, weighty speech, room shaking bass in the action scenes, and also plenty of subtle detail. Dimitri Tiomkin's score sounds wonderful in this re-mastered form, but why remove the Intermission music? It is available as an isolated chapter on the bonus disc, and the restoration doc points out that the film was rarely shown with it included, but I'd prefer to have the choice. After all, if I don't want to hear it I can just skip it. A flawed release then in my opinion, let down by a restoration that I think is only half successful. Hopefully, with new techniques applied such as Lowry's, a more thorough job can be done in time for its release on Blu-Ray.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great DVD,
By
This review is from: The Guns Of Navarone (Special Edition) [DVD] [2007] (DVD)
Incredible value for the money - the film has been properly restored and the Technicolor looks amazing. Disc two has some nice extras, both of the reminicence-interview type and some unusual B&W featurettes shot at the time. There's also a look at Tiomkin's score and the chance to see and hear the prologue without the narration. Christopher Frayling discusses the film in a way that makes you want to watch it all over again immediately. Heroes, anti-heroes, action, a long, thin thread of melancholy and a beautiful last scene - this has it all.
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