Password "heavy water"

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Movie
German title Password "heavy water"
Original title The Heroes of Telemark
Country of production Great Britain
original language English , German , Norwegian
Publishing year 1965
length 131 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Anthony Mann
script Ben Barzman
Ivan Moffat
production S. Benjamin Fisz
music Malcolm Arnold
camera Robert Krasker
cut Bert Bates
occupation

Keyword "Heavy Water" (Original title: The Heroes of Telemark ) is a British war film by director Anthony Mann from 1965. It is set in the Norwegian province of Telemark during the Second World War and is about the efforts of Norwegian resistance fighters, production and transport sabotage the heavy water that the Nazis needed to manufacture atomic bombs. The story told is largely based on real events , the characters are mostly based on real people.

The film was shown in cinemas for the first time in the Federal Republic of Germany on September 2, 1966, and in the GDR it was first shown on January 29, 1985 on GDR television (GDR-F1) . In Germany it was shown in cinemas and for a long time on television in a heavily cut version, and the uncut version has been available since the DVD was released. Due to a release on VHS he is also known under the title Shock Troop Telemark .

action

In Norway, occupied by the Germans in 1942: a motorcade of the German occupation drives on a serpentine road . A group of Norwegian resistance fighters is waiting a few meters higher along the road and, as the column drives by, sets a large boulder rolling, which ultimately hurls a German car off the road. The German Reich Commissioner has the fleeing assassins under fire and orders 15 civilians from the Telemark province to be executed in retaliation .

Knut Straud, leader of a Norwegian resistance group, brings a microfilm smuggled from the hydrofactory near the village of Rjukan to Dr. Rolf Pedersen, physicist at the University of Oslo . Pedersen finds out that the Germans make heavy water in the factory , an important part of building atomic bombs. Together with some helpers, Straud and Pedersen bring the ferry to Trondheim forcibly under their control and set course for Great Britain. On the way you can avoid sea ​​mines at the last second. Once in England, they deliver the news to the British allies , who then decide to destroy the factory.

Straud, who is not yet aware of the dangers of the factory and the heavy water, and Pedersen return to Norway to a hut where Pedersen's ex-wife Anna and her uncle keep resistance fighters hiding. Pedersen tries unsuccessfully to win back Anna's love. When Pedersen and Anna examine the factory and the surrounding area with a view to an attack by the Allies, it turns out that the factory is heavily guarded, has only one access road and the surrounding area is secured with plate mines . Pedersen receives a microfilm from a factory worker in the village church.

Given the heavy fortification, Pedersen is convinced that only an aircraft bombing could be successful in destroying the factory and thereby preventing the Germans from developing the atomic bomb. Because he accepts the death of 6,000 villagers in the process, he gets into a heated argument with Straud, as a result of which Pedersen can be persuaded to inform the other resistance fighters about the danger posed by the factory and the British allies to launch a ground attack to recommend.

The British pioneer troop planned for the ground attack , which the resistance fighters are supposed to help destroy the factory, is flown to Telemark. However, on the runway, which is marked with torches at night, there is a mislanding in which the occupants die. The group around Pedersen and Straud then came to the decision to end the production of the heavy water through their own sabotage. When they are planning the attack in their hiding place, they are overheard by a recently captured man who pretends to be a hunter.

At night, the sabotage raiders descend into the gorge. In the event of a capture by the Germans, they wear British uniforms to avoid retaliation among civilians. After crossing the gorge, they reach the factory premises unnoticed by the Germans. Pedersen and two helpers break into the factory and attach explosives to the production facility. When the saboteurs want to leave the factory premises, the explosive charges explode and the facility is destroyed. The saboteurs were immediately attacked by Wehrmacht soldiers on their escape, and a saboteur was fatally hit.

Shortly afterwards, a German officer announced that the production of heavy water will shortly be resumed, with more powerful plants built in the German Reich in the past few months . He puts the chief engineer at the factory under arrest.

Meanwhile, the man captured by the resistance group managed to break free and informed the Germans about the saboteurs. The Germans quickly track down Straud and Pedersen in their hiding place. On the run on skis, the two are separated, Pedersen is hit in the foot by a bullet. Pedersen ambushes the traitor and shoots him. On his further escape, Pedersen is exposed and arrested because of his injury. He was identified on the bus ride to the prison camp and managed to escape.

In the hospital, Pedersen learns that the Germans have now built a new plant for the production of heavy water and that production is already in full swing. Straud informs the British allies, who then carry out an air strike. 76 civilians die, the plant is badly hit, but the extensive stocks of heavy water remain undamaged. The heavy water, guarded by 1000 selected men, is to be transported by train from the factory premises to the port and there it will be loaded onto a train ferry to be later brought to Germany.

Straud and Pedersen decide to use explosive charges to sink the ferry, which was also used by civilians, in the lake, much to Anna's displeasure. In their opinion, the death of people when the ferry was sunk is irresponsible. In order not to have to shoulder the responsibility for the death of the civilians alone, Pedersen would like to request the consent of the British allies by radio. The radio messages are registered by a German radio direction finding vehicle parked a few kilometers away , which immediately goes to the source of the radio signal. There they only meet Anna's uncle, who sacrifices his life to make the operation a success and can shoot two Germans before he is fatally hit himself.

While the Germans are transporting the barrels with the heavy water onto the ferry by train, Straud and Pedersen sneak on board the “Hydro” ferry and fasten the explosives in the engine room. The time fuses set them to 9:45 - the time when the ferry will have reached the deepest point of the lake. When Pedersen notices the next morning that a young woman he knows is also going on the ferry with her baby, he follows her there. With their help, he manages to get all the children to the stern of the ferry and put on life jackets for them, ostensibly to play. The explosive charges explode and the ferry sinks with the railway wagons, while the children can save themselves in a dinghy and Pedersen is saved by Straud and Anna.

Historical background

Chemical and hydropower plant Vemork by Norsk Hydro near Rjukan with heavy water production plant in the front building, 1935

On October 18, 1942, a four-man vanguard of the Norwegian Special Operations Executive Command jumped off with parachutes to scout the area. In the film, this happens at Christmas and only with two Norwegians. On November 19, 1942, two Horsa cargo ships belonging to the Royal Air Force crashed in Norway while they were carrying 34 British engineer soldiers on their mission to destroy the hydraulic plant. The survivors were captured, interrogated, tortured and shot by the Germans, even though they were all in uniform. However, the film says that all soldiers died in the mislanding. It also goes unmentioned that the vanguard survived for four months on moss and lichen with a single reindeer in the icy winter. On February 16, 1943, Norwegian resistance fighters were dropped about 65 kilometers north of the hydrofactory by parachute jump, they met with the reconnaissance team. On February 28, 1943, nine men climbed into the steep-walled gorge and fought their way up 150 meters over mostly bare rock faces to reach the factory on the other side of the gorge. Undetected, they gained access to the hydrofactory, fastened their explosives, detonated it and fled safely. Neither Norwegians nor Germans were killed during this attack. The film shows an exchange of fire during the escape, in which people die, and does not mention that some of the nine attackers subsequently fled to Sweden. The film also shows that this attack took place the night after the glider crashed and not three months later when it actually happened. The factory was bombed on November 16, 1943, but in the film the bombing takes place just a few weeks after the sabotage and before Easter. On November 20, 1944, the ferry was sabotaged and sunk in Lake Tinnsjo, killing 14 Norwegians and four Germans - but the film suggests that this happened shortly after the bombing. Contrary to what is shown in the film, the train ferry was practically unguarded at the pier and there was no real attempt to help rescue anyone on board. In the film, the events mentioned take place over a period of about three months, but in fact it was 18 months.

production

The film was shot both at Pinewood Studios in London and for several months - during the Norwegian winter - on location, u. a. also in Rjukan . According to the director Mann, the cooperation with the Norwegian authorities was so good that it was possible to film at all original locations (ferry, hydropower, railways) and thus avoid making backdrops. The film crew consisted of 120 people. The film was filmed in icy temperatures of down to −20 ° C. The ravine that the saboteurs had to cross to reach the factory site looked like a wind tunnel when filming. Equipment and crew had to be brought down into the gorge in a gondola guided on rails. The shooting of the saboteurs abseiling into the gorge turned out to be dangerous because the walls of the gorge were icy. The equipment had to be moved on sleds by the film crew. Former members of the Norwegian Resistance acted as advisors to the production team during the shoot. The Olympic ski instructor Helge Stoylen and his students assisted director Mann in staging the skiing. For example, Stoylen held a camera between his legs when he was driving at full speed to film the runway.

Kirk Douglas spoke out in favor of Richard Harris as the second leading actor, as Douglas himself said "needed someone to vent to". There was tension between the main actors Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, especially at the start of shooting. This had a useful effect on the film, since the characters they embodied often faced each other in the plot as well. The character embodied by Douglas is based on Knut Haukelid, who was actually a member of the sabotage strike force at the time. The captain of the ferry "Hydro" is played by the actor who was the captain at the time and is one of the few people who were able to save themselves on the shore when the ferry went down.

Keyword: "Heavy Water" was director Anthony Mann's last film completed before his death. He described the film as the quietest ever made, as it contained very few moments in which people spoke. John P. Fulton , three-time Oscar winner, was responsible for the special effects ; he died in the year of production. The production cost was $ 5.6 million.

Frames

Compared to the original US theatrical version (131 minutes), the German theatrical version was shortened by approx. 8 minutes to 123 minutes. The German television broadcast several times a version shortened by another 15-17 minutes, about 106-108 minutes long, in which the image format was also reduced from 2.35: 1 to 1.85: 1. For the DVD release (length: 125 minutes, PAL-accelerated ), all cut scenes, mainly consisting of briefings and personal conversations between Rolf and Anna, were largely left in the original language and provided with German subtitles, but some scenes are also dubbed in German. This completed version has meanwhile also been broadcast on German television.

The film was released in an approx. 90-minute version in the aspect ratio 4: 3 under the title Shock Troop Telemark in Germany on VHS.

reception

Dramaturgy and characters

According to the lexicon of international films , Mann had “experienced the film , with a prominent cast, historically not very sensitive, but with considerable technical effort” . The TV magazine prisma sees a “gripping war adventure with top cast” . Mike Swain (Kino-zeit.de) says that Anthony Mann skilfully staged an adventure story that was exciting up to the last minute, but that surprisingly little was shot. He describes the pictures of the Norwegian landscape as “great in places” . The landscape panoramas are also "impressive" according to the web.de film archive , but the resistance adventure is "naive" , has "no interest in the people involved" and is "woodenly staged" . Schnittberichte.com describes the film as a "war actioner" who stood out from the competition in some ways, because the plot of the film deals unusually critically with the subject of civilian victims and tries to portray the actors in a multi-layered manner. On the other hand, the one-dimensional German occupiers and the frequent use of the pathetic background music are typical of the genre, which is nevertheless highly successful. However, the film scores massively thanks to the impressive shots of the setting in Norway. In this way, the barren, snow-covered mountains and fjords would be cleverly captured and would contribute significantly to the successful look of the film. The film magazine cinema says that Anthony Mann's last completed film impresses more as a snow landscape painting than as a war adventure. The story is tough, but picture magician man is here with himself. Film historians would cheer, action fans would fall asleep.

Dennis Schwartz gives the film an overall grade of C +. Mann's film is by far not his best, but it still has some pop due to a few big action scenes. However, the film is overly long and clumsy in places, has a hectic pace and poorly developed characters. (Quote: "But it's sluggish in spots, poorly paced, overlong and the characters are not developed." ) The snowy Norwegian fjords and mountains towered over the characters and the thin story. The film is a heroic espionage adventure shaped by Hollywood fantasy and would not manage to convey the dark side of his characters or any psychological meaning that Mann is used to. Although the film shows a lot of fantastic camera settings, it only serves as commercial film entertainment, which is basically nothing bad, but the film, although technically convincing, does not manage to arouse enthusiasm. While Kirk Douglas is efficient as an action hero, he is not impressive or memorable. The formulaic required romance between Douglas and Ulla Jacobsson seems artificial and unnecessary and burdens the film.

The American Time magazine says that the drama loses all sense of directness during long debates about love, war and marriage. Since ultimately no film can create real uncertainty about who won World War II, the only pertinent question is how. The answer from password “heavy water” was to play Kirk Douglas and his buddies off against an elite Nazi unit that was so clumsy that their final defeat seemed suspiciously like a cover-up (quote: “Tele-mark's answer is to pit Douglas and his right-makes-might pals against a Nazi elite force so inept that its final defeat looks suspiciously like a snow job. " ).

According to Dean Brierly from the American film magazine CinemaRetro , the film avoids big battle scenes and cardboard heroism in favor of daring, small attacks and fallible, morally conflicting characters (quote: "[...] it eschews grandiose battle scenes and cardboard heroics in favor of daring, small- scale raids and fallible, morally conflicted characters "). The character Rolf Pederson, embodied by Kirk Douglas, is self-centered, addicted to pleasure, and would rather wait for the war in the hands of as many women as possible than help to fight the Germans. Before doing that, he must be ashamed in front of the leader of the resistance movement, Knut Straud, who is played by Richard Harris with charismatic liveliness. Straud is obliged to do everything possible to prevent the Germans from getting the supplies of heavy water they need, even from risking the lives of innocent women and children. Like the characters in Manns Noiren, the resistance members in Telemark live in constant fear of discovery and death, not only of the German occupiers, but also of the Norwegian fifth columns . Mann's direction effectively evokes the nightmarish nature of its existence, even though the film is set in the middle of open, snow-covered Norwegian landscapes rather than cramped urban environments. The tension of the film is further increased by his refusal to ignore the consequences of the resistance attempts, for example the local German commander does not hesitate to order the execution of innocent civilians in retaliation for any act of sabotage. The film also benefits from Robert Krasker's brilliant recordings of the numerous action sequences, the effect of which is all the stronger due to their modest dimensions and their inconspicuous staging. Particularly noteworthy are a tragically ending landing maneuver by the Allies and the successful sabotage attack on the hydraulic factory. The most memorable sequence of the film, however, is a fatal chase on skis in which Straud and Pedersen flee from a unit of German hunters. The sequence was excellently filmed and edited, and the man filmed the hunt in long shots, in which the skis stand out as dark figures against the pure white of the snow and the vulnerability of the two resistance leaders is emphasized. All of these sequences are almost silent, except for Malcolm Arnold's evocative music, which underscores Mann's belief in the superiority of images over dialogue.

German version

Schnittberichte.com thinks that the scenes that were removed for the German version reduced the potential for conflict between the characters immensely, but also tightened the film. The German version seems much more dynamic and action-oriented, although some of the scenes seem a bit bumpy. Where the film goes a little further than the competition, it is cut back by the German adaptation. The scenes in which the Nazi Reich Commissioner issues orders to execute civilians in retaliation for the attacks, which are missing in the German version, were a drastic weakening.

DVDs

The film has been available as a single DVD since August 2006. In August 2010, the film was also released on the double DVD A Reunion with ... Kirk Douglas along with the film City Without Pity .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Password “Heavy water” #Fessungen
  2. ↑ a b Password “Heavy water”. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 29, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ IMDB: Keyword 'Schweres Wasser' (1965) - premiere dates , accessed on November 6, 2010
  4. ↑ Epinions.com: The Heroes of Telemark ... a story of Norwegian determination ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 13, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.epinions.com
  5. ^ Tarquin's Collective Caving Site: Heroes of Telemark 2006 - The reality behind the films. , accessed November 13, 2010
  6. ↑ TV Guide : The Heroes Of Telemark: Review , accessed November 6, 2010
  7. ^ The New York Times : Film Series and Movies Listings , accessed November 8, 2010
  8. ↑ Variety : The Heroes of Telemark Review ( Memento of the original from March 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 6, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.variety.com
  9. ↑ OFDB: OFDb - Version of the keyword 'Schweres Wasser' (1965) , accessed on November 6, 2010
  10. ↑ OFDB: OFDb - Version of the keyword 'Schweres Wasser' (1965) , accessed on November 6, 2010
  11. ↑ a b Schnittberichte.com: Password 'Heavy water' , accessed on November 6, 2010
  12. ↑ IMDB: Keyword 'Schweres Wasser' (1965) , accessed on November 6, 2010
  13. ↑ OFDB: OFDb - Version of the keyword 'Schweres Wasser' (1965) , accessed on November 6, 2010
  14. ↑ Insert of the VHS cassette film poster Heroes of Telemark
  15. ↑ prisma.de: Keyword 'Schweres Wasser' , accessed on November 6, 2010
  16. ↑ Mike Swain, Kino-zeit.de: Password “Schweres Wasser” ( memento of the original from December 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 6, 2010 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kino-zeit.de
  17. ↑ Film archive at web.de: Keyword “Schweres Wasser” , accessed on November 6, 2010
  18. ↑ Cinema : STOßTRUPP “SCHWERES WASSER” , accessed on November 17, 2010
  19. ↑ Dennis Schwartz: HEROES OF TELEMARK, THE , accessed November 13, 2010
  20. ↑ Time Magazine: Cinema: Cold Front (February 18, 1966) , accessed November 13, 2010
  21. ↑ Dean Brierly (CinemaRetro): DEAN BRIERLY REVIEWS TWO FILMS BY ANTHONY MANN , accessed November 10, 2010