Night of the Generals (1967)

☆ ☆ ☆

Night of the Generals (1967) – A. Litvak

Not quite as spectacular as it aims to be, especially with all these stars (O’Toole, Sharif, Pleasance, Courtenay), but this tale of the murder of a prostitute by a high-ranking Nazi general held my attention all the way through.  Director Anatole Litvak (a refugee from earlier golden days) wants to counterpoint the murder of masses that generals oversee with the individual pathology that leads to brutal personal murders (and which might self-justify both) but it doesn’t entirely hold together.  O’Toole is chilly and rather bizarre as one of the suspected generals, Sharif has too little to do but is charismatic doing it, Pleasance brings his character actor skills, but Courtenay more than holds his own with a naturalness that seems a little jarring amidst all this star power.  Philippe Noiret is solid in a bit part as an Interpol investigator who attempts to solve the murder decades later after Sharif has failed to do it (he plays a major in the “internal affairs” branch). Perhaps meant to compete or echo the David Lean epics of the era, Night of the Generals falls a bit short, feeling flatter despite its sweep across settings (Warsaw, Paris, Hamburg) and time. Perhaps it is a nagging sense of unreality, that the war and its grave consequences are being ignored (despite the focus on comparing large and small atrocities), that keeps this from hitting home?  Or perhaps it is all too pat, with a “twist” at the end returning to tie up all of the loose ends that was much too easily spotted? At any rate, it is what it is – a not unpleasant time-waster that wants to be more.