Directed by Henri Verneuil Music by Georges Delerue | Produced by Carlo Ponti Cinematography Andreas Winding | |
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Written by François Boyeur
Wolf Mankowitz
Henri Verneuil Starring Anthony Quinn
Virna Lisi | ||
The 25th Hour (French: La Vingt-cinquième Heure) is a 1967 war drama film, starring Anthony Quinn and Virna Lisi. It was produced by Italian producer Carlo Ponti and directed by French director Henri Verneuil. The film is based on a novel by C. Virgil Gheorghiu. It follows the troubles experienced by a Romanian peasant couple caught up in World War II.
Contents
Plot
In a small village in Romania, a local police constable frames Johann Moritz (Quinn) on charges of being Jewish, because Moritz' wife, Suzanna, has refused his advances. Moritz is sent to a Romanian concentration camp as a Jew, Jacob Moritz. He escapes to Hungary with some Jewish prisoners where the Hungarians imprison them for being citizens of an enemy country (Romania). The Hungarians eventually send them to Germany to fill German "requests" for foreign laborers. In Germany Moritz is spotted by an SS officer who designates him as Aryan, frees him from the labor camp and forces him to join Waffen SS. After the war, Moritz is brutally beaten by Russians for being in the Waffen SS and then arrested and prosecuted as a Waffen SS war criminal by the Americans. Eventually he is released and re-united with his wife and sons in Germany.
The picture is based on the novel of the same name by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu. The story line includes Hungary's alliance with Nazi Germany, the forced cession of Eastern Romania to the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequent events in central Europe during and after World War II.