dimplet What is most remarkable about "36 Hours" is the year it was made: 1965. With the third and best Bond movie having been released in 1964, Hollywood and England were in the midst of 1,001 iterations of the secret agent theme. To the modern viewer, this appears a knock off of "The Prisoner," but actually that was first broadcast in 1967. One poster says McGoohan outlined the concept in 1965, which still raises the possibility that "36 Hours" was a direct inspiration. However, there were hints of what was to come in his Danger Man/Secret Agent series. And some say "The Prisoner" was based on a real spy village. Some might say "36 Hours" is an homage to Hitchcock. The concept certainly is, and there is a reason: Roadl Dahl also wrote several of the best "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television episodes. The early scenes, where there a so many gray, little people who are actually spies is true to the Hitchcock paranoia, as is the sense of atmosphere. However, the directorial style is not Hitchcock, and one must wonder what the movie would have looked like in his hands. I think the pace would have felt more taut, with more buildup of suspense. Another factor is the music. Look at the Portugal scenes - they look like Hitch, but the music by Dimitri Tiomkin is far too light for suspense. There was very little music later in the movie to set the mood. Bernard Herrmann would have given it more of a Hitch feel. So, I think they were trying not to imitate Hitch -- perhaps too hard. Some complain that it is too slow, and, indeed, at points the movie does feel like it is 36 hours. But I strongly feel we have become an ADHD nation of short attention span due to modern editing. The slower pace gives you time to absorb the details and atmosphere, which is as much of the story as the explanatory dialogue. And you don't feel like a limp rag when it is over. There are elements that echo Hitch's "North By Northwest," which co- starred Eva Marie Saint, a very pretty face with nothing to prove. Here, she gets to act a very different persona, and she creates a convincing younger version of Marlene Dietrich, with just a touch of German accent. They don't come more handsome than James Garner, but he, too, gets a chance to prove his acting chops. Rod Taylor also was in a Hitch classic: "The Birds," and gives a convincing performance here, one of his best. So there is some great acting to be seen."36 Hours" is about a Great Con, much like "The Sting" 1973, and the earlier "Went the Day Well?" 1942, which also entailed Germans speaking perfect English. Actually, there was much about D-Day that was a Great Con, much of which has only come out more recently. Lots of clues "accidentally" fell into German hands, including a corpse of a courier, the part-brainchild of Ian Fleming (who also hatched a scheme that sounds a bit like "U-571.") There were lots of real cons going on on the Allied side, so in that light, it is not so improbable that the Germans would try one of their own, if they had had the imagination. It takes a while for the plot to thicken, say, about half the movie. The details eventually come together nicely, the hallmark of Roald Dahl. The clicking heels was a nice touch as a giveaway. The Germans now face the problem of whom and which version to believe, and the fall back to believing the Pas de Calais option is executed believably. Here, we see hints of the tricks that were played, historically. The movie seems to stay true to the era.With all the attention to detail, there was one oddity: the coffee, which was served in a French press without any plunger. You cannot make coffee, then remove the plunger, or you will pour grounds into your cup. So this coffee was made, then put in the carafe. Was this a goof, or was it a clue something was wrong with the coffee?Spoiler alert:There was.

thinker1691 As a matter of record, there were hundreds of soldiers who returned to the States with little memory of what their role was in World War Two. Here in this story called " 36 Hours " an Intelligent's Officer (James Garner) Major Jefferson F. Pike is given the latest secret plans for the Invasion of Normandy and is thereafter sent to Lisbon Portugal to ascertain if the German High Command are chasing the false ruses put out by the Allies. What the U.S Intelligence office does not know is, the Major is unexpectedly kidnapped and sent to Germany to undergo a daring experimental scheme. The Germans' have a highly educated Phychiatrist, Major Walter Gerber (Rod Taylor) who is going to try and convince the Major, that not only is World War II is over, but it is now six years in the future. With the help of Anna Hedler (Eva Marie Saint) heading a highly trained staff of English speaking Germans and a secret, isolated military compound they hope to trick him into revealing the Allies invasion plans. All things go according to plan until the one thing they had hoped would not happen does. Although Garner proves to command the screen with his role, it is Taylor who elicits sympathy for his compassionate character and we discover ourselves rooting for Gerber to succeed. A dramatic film and one which allows the audience to wait impatiently for the hours to be extended. ****

bkoganbing 36 Hours is a film that finds James Garner as a major attached to Allied intelligence and to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in London. The best kept secret of World War II was the exact date and location of the cross channel invasion into western Europe. As things get closer to D-Day, the Allies want to make sure the Nazis stay fooled right up to the end.Which is why Garner goes to Lisbon to check out a source at the German Embassy in neutral Portugal. But the Nazis have been watching him too. While in Lisbon, he meets up with a Mr. Michael Finn at a hotel bar rendezvous which renders him unconscious and Garner is secretly flown to Germany.The nice things about 36 Hours is that some of the facts about the landings at Normandy are woven very nicely into an intricate espionage story. Incidentally some of the same facts that were used in another Garner classic film, The Americanization of Emily, but in a far more comic vein.What the Nazis have decided to do is trick Garner into revealing the plans for the imminent invasion. They've set up an elaborate facade of a US. Army Hospital in an occupied Germany in 1950 and when Garner wakes up, they're going to convince him that the war is over and the allies have been victorious. They've even cooked up a love interest in Eva Marie Saint who is formerly a concentration camp inmate and like all of them will do anything to avoid going back.All this is the brainchild of German doctor Rod Taylor who is convinced that without the usual Nazi like methods Garner can be tricked into revealing vital information. Skeptical about the plan, but willing to go along with it if it succeeds is SS major Werner Peters who played a lovely variety of Nazis in the Sixties. Of course when Garner does realize this is all a charade it becomes quite a three cornered cat and mouse game between him and Taylor and Peters. The SS has a tried and true motto, they're skeptical in general about information not obtained under torture.36 Hours is a finely executed espionage and escape drama. The cast is at they're combined very best. But as good as the ones I've mentioned, there is one stunningly droll performance by John Banner, soon to become Sergeant Schultz on Hogan's Heroes. He plays a German version of Dad's Army and he's one of the older generation that hasn't bought into the Nazi way. He's the best in this fine film.

Robert J. Maxwell The story of a US major kidnapped in May, 1944, by the Germans who try to trick him into believing that he has amnesia, the war is over, the Allies won, and -- by the way, where and when will the D-Day landings take place? The Germans have set up a fake hospital staffed by phony Americans and they rush the unconscious Major Pike (James Garner) there. He is attended by Rod Taylor, a real doctor but wearing an American uniform, and Eva Marie Saint, his fake nurse and wife, who has been chosen for the deception from among the inmates of Ravensbruck.The Germans have been very thorough. Alles in Ordnung. And they convince Garner for a day or two that the concocted story is true. Garner is sufficiently convinced that he spills the beans about the invasion. But he becomes suspicious and for some time exists in two zones, Schrödinger's major. When he finally twigs to the con game, he lies and tells them that he made up the Normandy story. Thereafter, it gets kind of complicated.It's structured like a three-act play. Act I. We see Garner in his habitat in England, going over the invasion plans with other officers. He is told he must meet his contact in Lisbon. He incurs an important paper cut while handling a map. Act II. The ersatz hospital where Rod Taylor explains everything for the thousandth time to the phony staff. Here we see Garner wake up and react to his "amnesia". We then see the penny drop. Act III. An anticlimax in which Garner and Saint escape to Switzerland.It would have made a good Twilight Zone episode. As it is, Act III should have been dropped and more time spent with Garner in the hospital, getting to know the other "patients", becoming friendly with Taylor, developing some affection for Saint. I don't know what they might have filled the story out with, but it's too sketchy. Here is Garner, in this typical VA-type hospital and we only see him talking to Taylor, Saint, and an intrusive and extravagantly stupid SS officer posing as a civilian. Garner has lost six years of his life, as far as he knows, and he simply doesn't snoop around enough for missing information. How can he wander around and not stop a pinchbeck patient at random and ask how the Sox are doing? Or whether Mammy Yokum got out of the cabbage patch? And I wish the SS officer hadn't been so obviously a pig. The guy looks like Elmer Fudd. He's manipulative, craven, obsequious, "practical" as he puts it. The SS officer is a real stereotype, too. He's fat, arrogant, and has a hang-worthy neck the width of one of the Parthenon pillars. He ends every sentence with a rhetorical, "Huh?" The German soldiers, when they are in American uniforms, look like anybody you might stop on the street. But when the jig is up, soldiers in German uniforms take over and they are pudgy, jowly, and ugly. How retro can you get? The movie is over-directed too. Example: There's a scene in which Saint and Garner are sitting across from each other. She's knitting. Garner has become suspicious and is silently probing a bookcase looking for something -- anything -- that describes post-war events. Saint's job is to keep an eye on him without revealing that she's doing so. Garner is supposed to be hiding his doubts. You and I -- total amateurs at the business -- could do a better job of enacting the roles. Garner is supposed to act naturally, be casual, but he's frowning as he flips through the books and his suspicions grow. Saint should be concentrating on her knitting with only an occasional flick of her glance at Garner, but she virtually stops knitting and stares goggle-eyed at Garner. It's like watching a Cecil B. DeMille movie where every nuance is shoved down your throat. Just open a little wider please.Interesting byplay towards the end between Garner and Taylor when the Reveal has been made and Garner is about to be toted off for interrogation by the SS. What do you suppose they'll do to me? asks Garner. "Oh, they'll probably start off with something simple first. Maybe sleep deprivation. A trick they picked up from the Russians. Deprive a man of sleep and you make him fuzzy, confuse his allegiances." It makes the SS sound like St. Francis of Assisi, compared to the "enhanced interrogation" of today.Rod Taylor's character is supposed to have been born in America and spent his first sixteen years there before coming to Germany, but he wouldn't fool me for a minute because he uses the expression "different to", a British locution, rather than the American "different from" or "different than". Eva Marie Saint wouldn't fool me either. I know a person from Newark, New Jersey, when I see one.I've kind of made fun of some of the movie but it's not actually badly done. I was impressed the first time I saw it. What a delicious trap the Germans have set. It's pretty suspenseful in Act II and the tension is underlined in Dmitri Tiomkin's score, with its familiar crashing, dramatic chords and its clanging bells. Worth catching.