Operation Crossbow
Short description
Operation Crossbow is a Second World War thriller about Allied intelligence discovering that Nazi Germany is developing devastating new weapons: the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket. British officials are initially skeptical of reports coming out of occupied Europe, but evidence points to a secret research facility at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast. To learn how far the German program has advanced and to help destroy it, the Allies recruit agents with scientific and language skills, who pose as engineers sympathetic to the Nazi regime and attempt to infiltrate the heavily guarded weapons complex. The film moves between the German scientists and officers working on the rockets, who speak German, and the British effort to uncover and sabotage the program.
Michael Anderson directed the film, which sits between Shake Hands with the Devil and The Shoes of the Fisherman in his filmography. The screenplay was written by Emeric Pressburger, Derry Quinn and Ray Rigby, and Carlo Ponti produced. The cast includes Sophia Loren as Nora Van Ostamgen, George Peppard as Lt. John Curtis, Trevor Howard as Professor Lindemann, John Mills as General Boyd, Richard Johnson as Duncan Sandys and Tom Courtenay as Robert Henshaw, among 35 credited performers.
Released in 1965, the film took about 4 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.6 from roughly 6,100 votes, while on TMDB it has a rating of 6.7 from 125 votes. A critics' rating of 6 out of 10 from eight reviews places it close to the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979), played by Barbara Rutting (1927-2020), was a real person. She was a German pilot who served for a time as Adolf Hitler’s (1889-1945) personal pilot. During the Battle of Berlin, she was the one who tried to persuade the Führer to flee the capital in a light Fieseler Fi 156 Storch aircraft.
- The actors playing the fascists actually speak German, which is not typical for war films of the 1960s. The bosses at MGM did not know the actors would be speaking German (with subtitles) until they saw the rough cut of the film. They wanted to dub all these lines into English, but director Michael Anderson (1920-2018) firmly refused.
- In Arab countries, Sophia Loren was blacklisted for her role as a Jewish woman who survived a concentration camp in Daniel Mann’s (1912-1991) drama “Judith” (1966). The film was shot in Israel and shown in Beirut, but all the scenes with Loren were cut from it. The film poster was changed, and the actress's last name was removed from the cast list.
- Richard Johnson (1927-2015) plays the role of Duncan Sandys (1908-1987). He was a real British politician, a member of Conservative governments in the United Kingdom in the 1950s and 1960s. Winston Churchill’s (1874-1965) son-in-law, he participated in combat during World War II and was wounded, after which he limped for the rest of his life.
- George Peppard (1928-1994) had a contract with MGM Studios that he desperately wanted to break. The MGM management didn't object, but stipulated that the actor had to star in one more film. That film turned out to be "Operation Crossbow".
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
