Avalanche Express

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Movie
German title Avalanche Express
Original title Avalanche Express
Country of production United States
original language English , Gaelic
Publishing year 1979
length 88 minutes
Rod
Director Mark Robson ,
Monte Hellman (unofficial)
script Abraham Polonsky
production Lynn Guthrie ,
Mark Robson
music Allyn Ferguson
camera Jack Cardiff
cut Garth Craven ,
Monte Hellman
occupation

Avalanche Express is a spy film by US director Mark Robson from 1979. It is based on the novel of the same name by writer Colin Forbes . The premiere date for the Federal Republic of Germany was on September 27, 1979.

Plot of the novel

The high KGB official Sergei Marenkov decides to infiltrate the communist system from the inside after his wife was driven to her death as a result of intrigue. Every month he smuggles an audio cassette with inside information on board the night train Moscow - Basel , which is then transported to the USA by a specially created special unit under the direction of Col. Wargrave .

When the information leak is discovered, Marenkow is afraid of being exposed. In a night and fog action, while attending a congress in Bucharest , Col. Wargrave flew him to Milan in a private plane. A direct flight to the USA is not possible because all airports in Europe have been closed due to a snow disaster, with the exception of Amsterdam Airport . For this reason he has to use the Atlantic Express, which runs from Milan via Zurich , Basel and Cologne to Amsterdam .

Colonel Scharpinsky from the KGB is now doing all he can to prevent General Marenkov from escaping, as he has extensive information about the Soviet agent network in Europe and can have it exposed. During a forced stop, the train is shot at with machine guns . In the Gotthard massif , an artificial will avalanche triggered that will bury the train. In Belgium , the Geiger Group, a terrorist organization, is said to be blowing up the bridge over the Meuse .

Ultimately, all acts of sabotage can be thwarted by counterintelligence, and General Marenkow can be flown from Amsterdam to the USA.

Plot in the film

The plot in the film largely follows the novel and has only been changed slightly. So the name of the Russian colonel in the film is Nikolai Bunin and not Scharpinsky. The protagonists do not meet Marenkow in Bucharest, but in La Scala in Milan , and the train journey through the Alps is accepted as a calculated risk in order to set a trap for Bunin.

backgrounds

The film adaptation was unfortunate: Robert Shaw died suddenly during the filming and a large part of his dialogue had to be re-performed by a voice actor ( Robert Rietty ), as it had been decided to publish the opening scene in Russian with English subtitles during the scene at the time of the shoot with Shaw still stipulated that the Russians speak broken English. In the course of this, Rietty also had to speak to Shaw's other dialogues for reasons of continuity. The director Mark Robson also died during the filming. The film was finished by Monte Hellman , who was not named in the credits. Robson's duties as producer were taken over by Gene Corman .

The result is a hopeless mess of finished and unfinished scenes and looks overall immature and pieced together. The recordings of the train moving through the snow-covered Gotthard massif were reproduced on a model railway, which is easy to see. The Geiger group associates comparisons with the Red Army faction active in Germany at the time and Andreas Baader .

Reviews

"Incredible, superficial, full of sensational effects and staged without care, the film offers effort instead of quality."

- Lexicon of international film

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Avalanche Express. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used