The Night of the Generals (1967)

[Neville]

Tired of WWII movies? Then you should try this one, it is a very unusual film. It's about a Nazi general (Omar Shariff) investigating the murder of a prostitute in the war-torn Warsaw of 1942, a murder comitted by one of the several Nazi generals in town that night.

But don't be confused, this is no whodonit nor psycho-thriller, not evena police procedural film. Rather than that, the film uses the murder as a McGuffin, and focuses instead on the lives of several high brass nazis during and after the war. The famous plot to assassinate Hitler, for instance, occupies part of the 135' running time, and so does the love story between a young soldier and the daughter of another general.

Believe it or not, it is fascinating stuff. Rather than emphasizing any war or thriller element veteran Anatole Litvak focuses in character development and meticulous ambientation, as the film takes place, most of the time, in interiors. The casting is also very good. Christopher Plummer shines as Rommel, but the film mostly rests on the heads of Shariff, Donald Pleasence and Peter O'Toole. If the film has any fault, it should be its final act, set in 1965, where the loose ends are tied; these scenes lack the subtle anguish of those occurring during the Nazi rule, and the killer's motivations are never properly dealt with.

[Yaddo 42]

I seen it several times over the years, always interesting but has a muted tone that holds the film back for me.

But recently I found the source novel on the clearance table at a bookstore. After reading it, and recalling what I remember of the film, the movie is a fairly straight forward adaptation. But the book includes fake journal entries, excerpts from articles about, and memoirs of some of the main characters illuminating their motivations and filling in "offscreen" details. Even the last act set in the 60s is very similar, so the weakness you mentioned in the last act is there in the book as well. But it works a little better in the book since there is more room to show that this is Germany coming to terms with its past and how the generals and other officers have managed to find prominent positions post-war. The murders seem to be an annoying afterthought to most of the characters despite the fact the killer is still loose, none of these people are likely victims. The politics play a stronger role in the book since there is room and time to expand upon.

[Scott]

It sounds interesting. I'll keep a look out for it.

NIGHT OF THE GENERALS

[BoyScoutKevin]

It is hard to see Egyptian Omar Sharif as a German officer, but, when I saw it on television, I enjoyed it.

I would also recommend reading the book by Hans Hellmut Kirst. Unlike alot of films, this film is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel.

[Yaddo 42]

One difference in the book and the movie is that in the book Sharif's character is imprisoned as he tries to close the net on the killer just as the plot to assassinate Hitler goes into action. Others try to free him, including a French police detective acting as a liason between the Vichy and Germans, but with ties to the Resistance.

The killer orders the imprisoned officer killed before he can be rescued, seeming to cement his loyalty to Hitler, since he had him imprisoned under the pretense that the officer must be part of the plot, when in reality he's just covering his tracks. The French detective takes up the cause of stopping the killer in the book during the thrid act. Which is odd since Sharif's character in the book and the French Detective are so similar in personality that they are pratically the same man.

The ending plays out close to the movie elsewise, although the French detective lives, and the killer is still allowed to kill himself when it made clear that he is not wanted back across the Iron Curtain where he wound up when Germany fell. There have been killings there after the war, and now that the connections have been made, he is expendable to the Soviets and East Germans since serial killers "don't exist" in there, such heinous crimes being one more problem of the corrupt and decadent capitalist system. He carries out the deed alone with others waiting out the room but the book makes clear he is in there for several minutes before he does it.