The Pride and the Passion

During the Napoleonic Wars, a British naval officer named Anthony is sent to Spain to secure a huge cannon abandoned by retreating Spanish forces. A band of guerrilla fighters led by Miguel has its own plan for the weapon: they want to use it against the French garrison occupying Miguel's walled hometown. Anthony agrees to help the guerrillas haul the cannon across occupied territory in exchange for eventually taking it back to England. The journey is grueling, and along the way Anthony falls for Juana, the woman in Miguel's life.

The film is a 1957 American production directed by Stanley Kramer, who also produced it from a screenplay by Edward Anhalt and Edna Anhalt. Cary Grant plays Anthony, Frank Sinatra plays Miguel, and Sophia Loren plays Juana, with Theodore Bikel, John Wengraf and Jay Novello in supporting roles. Running 132 minutes, it was the earliest of eight features Kramer directed across two decades, preceding The Defiant Ones and On the Beach.

Reception was modest. On IMDb it holds 5.7 out of 10 from roughly 3,500 votes, and on TMDB 6 out of 10 from a much smaller sample. A critics' rating of 5.3 out of 10 from ten reviews places professional opinion slightly below the audience scores, though the two broadly agree that the film met with a lukewarm response.