| The 25th Hour (La Vingt-cinquième Heure) | |
|---|---|
 Film poster byHoward Terpning | |
| Directed by | Henri Verneuil |
| Written by | François Boyeur Wolf Mankowitz Henri Verneuil |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Starring | Anthony Quinn Virna Lisi |
| Cinematography | Andreas Winding |
| Music by | Georges Delerue Maurice Jarre |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 196 minutes (Europe) |
| Countries | France Italy Yugoslavia |
| Languages | French English Romanian |
The 25th Hour (French:La Vingt-cinquième Heure) is a 1967 anti-wardrama film directed byHenri Verneuil, produced byCarlo Ponti and starringAnthony Quinn andVirna Lisi.[1][2] The film is based on the bestselling novel byC. Virgil Gheorghiu[3] and follows the troubles experienced by aRomanian peasant couple caught up inWorld War II.[4]
In a smallTransylvanian village, a local police constable frames Johann Moritz on charges of beingJewish because Moritz's wife Suzanna has refused the constable's advances. Moritz is sent to a Romanianconcentration camp as a Jew, where he is known as Jacob Moritz. He escapes toHungary with some Jewish prisoners, but the Hungarians imprison them for being citizens of Romania, an enemy country. The Hungarian authorities eventually send them to Germany to fill German requests forforeign laborers. Moritz is spotted by anSS officer who designates him as anAryanGerman Romanian, freeing him from the labor camp and forcing him to join theWaffen-SS. After the war, Moritz is brutally beaten by the Soviets for having been a member of the Waffen-SS. He is then arrested and prosecuted as awar criminal by theAmericans. Eventually he is released and reunited with his wife and sons inoccupied Germany.
The film is based on the novel of the same name byConstantin Virgil Gheorghiu. The storyline includes Hungary's alliance withNazi Germany, theforced cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequent events inCentral Europe during and after World War II.
In a contemporary review forThe New York Times, criticBosley Crowther pannedThe 25th Hour as "... such a tasteless and pointless hodgepodge of deadly serious and crudely comic elements, of tragic historical allusions grossly garbled in specious movie terms, that it looms large as one of the most disreputable and embarrassing films in recent years ..." Crowther was especially critical of Anthony Quinn's character and performance: "... [T]here is no real continuity or real sincerity in the nature of the man. He ranges from an image of the poignant victim to one of a genial simpleton. And in all his shuddering misadventures, so darkly shadowed by the facts of history, he manifests no awareness of relation to the suffering of others or even a point of view. The only philosophical reaction registered by Mr. Quinn—or provided by his script writers—is one of confusion that this is happening to him. The impression transmitted by all this is one of utter insensitivity."[5]
Los Angeles Times film critic Philip K. Scheuer wrote: "One has to keep telling oneself what a good actor Anthony Quinn is in order to sustain interest ... For this odyssey of a wandering non-Jew takes up to 2 1/4 hours to say what it has to say, and even this doesn't add up to much which is new ..."[6]