The Night of the Generals

My list of positives will be relatively brief. A number of iconic stars from that era were successfully gathered, which reliably attracted crowds of viewers to the movie theaters in the 1960s, and the production is also professional; an elaborate film was created, into which the studio evidently placed considerable hopes and ambitions at the time. However, I find significantly more problems with it. The fact that Omar Sharif is not an ideal Aryan warrior and that the military technology in the film does not please the connoisseur's eye is the least of what I would criticize about the film. But that a high-ranking officer of the Abwehr is capable of initiating an investigation of German generals due to the death of one (Polish!) prostitute at a time when Nazi terror was at its peak in Europe and there was one extermination camp next to another within the General Government, is naivety that defies reason. There are countless similar lapses. A returning soldier confesses to a girl after a several-hour acquaintance a failure for which, given the circumstances, he would probably have been eliminated. The plot is driven by a series of absurd coincidences; apparently, even the cleaning lady at the Paris Gestapo knows about Operation Valkyrie; in short, from a screenplay perspective, it is a bizarre mixture that leaves me shaking my head. The crime element of the story fails because The Night of the Generals is the type of genre film where you know the culprit the moment they appear on screen. It's all exaggerated and as historically accurate as Dumas' romantic adventure stories. But he wrote about a time centuries removed, while this narrates a history that is only 25 years old. The Night of the Generals is not offensive and, if you have no exaggerated expectations and at least a mediocre knowledge of history, it can be reasonably entertaining. But from my perspective, it is outdated and long surpassed. Overall impression: 45%. (15/08/2020)