Kelly's Heroes
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| Kelly's Heroes | |
|---|---|
| Image:Kelly's Heroes movie.jpg | |
| Directed by | Brian G. Hutton |
| Written by | Troy Kennedy-Martin |
| Starring | Clint Eastwood Telly Savalas Carroll O'Connor Donald Sutherland Don Rickles |
| Release date(s) | June 23, 1970 (U.S.) |
| Running time | 144 min. |
| Country | Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States Image:Flag of SFR Yugoslavia.svg Yugoslavia |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Kelly's Heroes is an offbeat 1970 war film about a group of enterprising World War II soldiers from the U.S. 35th Infantry Division.
Directed by Brian G. Hutton, who also directed the 1968 WW II drama Where Eagles Dare, the film starred Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Carroll O'Connor, with lesser roles played by Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin MacLeod, and Stuart Margolin (all of whom would later become well-known film or television actors). The screenplay was written by highly-respected British film and television writer Troy Kennedy Martin.
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[edit] Synopsis
During World War II, Kelly (Clint Eastwood), a former lieutenant demoted to private as a scapegoat, captures a German colonel in Intelligence and gets him drunk to try to get information. Before he is killed by an assaulting German tank unit, the drunken prisoner of war blurts out an interesting tidbit: there is a cache of 14,000 gold bars (at a value of $16 million) stored in a bank vault 30 miles behind enemy lines in the town of Clairemont.
Kelly recruits a group of soldiers on R&R to sneak off and steal it. They include a skeptical master sergeant, "Big Joe" (Telly Savalas); a greedy and opportunistic supply sergeant, "Crapgame" (Don Rickles); a proto-hippie Sherman tank commander, "Oddball" (Donald Sutherland); and a number of stereotypical G.I.s. The men are presented as competent, but war-weary veterans; their motivations are more cynical and self-serving than patriotic.
The obvious antagonists are the Germans. However, it quickly becomes clear that the motley band's own superior officers are just as much an obstacle, if not more so. Their own commanding officer, Captain Maitland (Hal Buckley), cares more about turning the campaign into a personal shopping tour than for the actual welfare of his men. When intercepted radio messages of the unauthorized private enterprise raid are brought to the attention of gung-ho American Major General Colt (O'Connor), he misinterprets them as communications between inspired and patriotic soldiers and rushes to the front line to meet the spear-heading units.
Kelly's men race to reach the French town before their own army. There, they find it defended by three formidable Tiger I tanks with infantry support. The Americans are able to handle all but one Tiger in front of the bank itself. Ironically, it is the cooperation of the tank commander (Karl-Otto Alberty) that proves vital to achieving their goal. Powerless to defeat the armored behemoth, Kelly, Oddball and Big Joe gain the German officer's assistance by offering him and his crew a share of the riches. They load up the gold and go their separate ways, just in time to avoid meeting the still-clueless Colt.
[edit] Cast
- Clint Eastwood as Private Kelly
- Telly Savalas as Master Sergeant "Big Joe"
- Don Rickles as Staff Sergeant "Crapgame"
- Carroll O'Connor as Major General Colt
- Donald Sutherland as Sergeant "Oddball"
- Gavin McLeod as Moriarty
- Hal Buckley as Captain Maitland
- Stuart Margolin as Private "Little Joe"
- Tom Troupe as Caplar Job
- Karl-Otto Alberty as the German Tiger tank commander
[edit] Comments
Kelly's Heroes stands out from many earlier and contemporary war films in both its cynical tone and mixed conflict, as well as in its technical detail.[citation needed]
There is a great deal of comedy and satire in the film, including a nod to Eastwood's spaghetti westerns in a standoff with a Tiger tank — a virtual remake of the close of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — right down to the musical score takeoff. This film was produced and released during the Vietnam War, and in the same climate as M*A*S*H.
Kelly's Heroes was filmed prior to Eastwood's establishment as a leading film director. Several years after the film was released, Eastwood claimed that the movie studio (MGM) made additional cuts to Hutton's final version of the film, eliminating scenes that gave depth to the main characters. The resulting edits, Eastwood said, made the characters look like "a bunch of goof-offs from World War Two."
[edit] Production
The movie was filmed in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in regions which are now the independent countries of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. This was done mostly because earnings from showings of previous movies in Yugoslavia couldn't be taken out of the country, but could be used to fund the production.
The U.S. troops wear the insignia of the US 35th Infantry Division. The division actually was in action around Nancy in France in September of 1944. The film also uses authentic M4 Sherman tanks, while most other contemporary war films, for example Patton, employed too-modern M48 tanks. Such technical details as machine guns and entrenching tools are also remarkably accurate. The three Tiger I Tanks used in the film were actually adapted ex-Soviet Army T-34 tanks, converted in great detail by specialists of the Yugoslav army for the movie The Battle of Neretva.
Although he does not appear in the credits, future director John Landis worked as a production assistant. He also appeared in the movie, dressed as a nun. During the shooting of the picture in Yugoslavia, he wrote the first draft of what would eventually become An American Werewolf in London.
[edit] Musical score and soundtrack
The main musical theme of the movie (at both beginning and end) is "Burning Bridges," sung by The Mike Curb Congregation with music by Lalo Schifrin. There is also a casual rendition of the music in the background near the middle of the movie.
The soundtrack to the film also contains the song, "All For the Love of Sunshine," which became the first No. 1 country hit for Hank Williams, Jr..
- The soundtrack has not been released in the UK.
[edit] External links
- Kelly's Heroes at the Internet Movie Database
- Castle Beočin in Serbia (In movie Major General Colt O'Conor headquarters)da:Kellys Helte
de:Stoßtrupp Gold es:Kelly's Heroes fr:De l'or pour les braves hu:Kelly hősei nl:Kelly's Heroes ja:戦略大作戦 ro:Eroii lui Kelly ru:Герои Келли (фильм) sv:Kellys hjältar vi:Kelly's Heroes
