36 Hours [DVD] [1965] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

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 proven 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. The DVD's black and white transfer looks fine. There are no extras.

For ingenious pitches, 36 Hours is hard to beat: James Garner's military intelligence officer gets knocked out cold in Lisbon on the eve of D-Day and regains consciousness to discover its 1950 and he's been suffering recurring amnesia for the past six years. Unable to remember his friends or even his wife, his best hope of a cure is to try to remember what was on his mind just before his accident. Only it's not 1950, and the last thing on his mind was the details of the invasion, which Rod Taylor's German psychiatrist is very interested in...

Like Garner, the film spills the beans rather quickly, so it's not exactly a spoiler to reveal the premise, though thankfully the film still has a few good tricks up its sleeve as the plot twists and turns like a twisty turny thing as he tries to convince them he was lying (though it's perhaps a little too lucky that Werner Peters' evil SS man on the case is so pragmatically career-minded in his determination to take all the credit for Taylor's work that he doesn't pass the information on). While the film inevitably ends up as a chase thriller, it's still a rather good one, benefiting from strong characterisation, from Rod Taylor's 'good German' to John Banner's scene-stealing turn as a corrupt border guard, and it's nice to see Sig Rumann turn up briefly at the end as another border guard. Director George Seaton, one of those forgotten craftsmen, handles the material (partially based on a Roald Dahl story) well, Dmitri Tiomkin provides a strong score and the film looks particularly good in WHV's black and white 2.35:1 widescreen transfer. The only extras are the theatrical trailer and trailers for Up Periscope and the Americanization of Emily. Terrifically entertaining, but whatever you do don't confuse it with the dire 1989 TV movie remake Breaking Point

this dvd of 36 hours is one of my favourites it is captivating and has a twist in it.