Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)

User Rating:

6.3/10   

Director:

Melville Shavelson

Writers:

Ted Berkman (book)
Melville Shavelson (written by)

Release Date:

30 March 1966 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | History | War

Tagline:

Outnumbered - unarmed - unprepared - they stunned the world with their incredible victory!

Plot:

An American Army officer is recruited by the yet to exist Israel to help them form an army. He is disturbed by this sudden appeal to his jewish roots...

Plot Keywords:

Beautiful Woman | Historical | Based On Book

Cast

Kirk Douglas	...	Col. David 'Mickey' Marcus
Senta Berger	...	Magda Simon
Angie Dickinson	...	Emma Marcus
James Donald	...	Maj. Safir
Stathis Giallelis	...	Ram Oren
Luther Adler	...	Jacob Zion
Topol	...	Abou Ibn Kader
Ruth White	...	Mrs. Chaison
Gordon Jackson	...	James MacAfee
Michael Hordern	...	British ambassador
Allan Cuthbertson	...	Immigration officer
Jeremy Kemp	...	British Immigration senior
Sean Barrett	...	British Immigration junior
Michael Shillo	...	Andre Simon
Rina Ganor	...	Rona

Runtime:

146 min | USA:138 min (DVD version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Hebrew

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | Australia:G | Finland:K-16 | South Korea:12 | Sweden:15 | Argentina:Atp | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Cinecittà Studios, Cinecittà, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Company:

Batjac Productions

Trivia:

Director Melville Shavelson and Kirk Douglas fought throughout the shoot. At one point, Shavelson even walked off the set, leaving his assistant to take over for the day.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When first seen, Angie Dickinson and Senta Berger are shown wearing fashions from the 1960s when the film was made, not the 1940s when the film was set.

Quotes:

Col. David 'Mickey' Marcus: Would you give up everything you love to fight an insane war for a little country that's gonna get its brains blown out in a couple of weeks?
Maj. Safir: If it were my country.
Col. David 'Mickey' Marcus: Maybe it's yours, but... it isn't mine.
Maj. Safir: But you are a Jew.
Col. David 'Mickey' Marcus: I'm an American, Major. That's my religion. The last time I was in Temple I was 13 years old. I made a speech and got 42 fountain pens. I don't have to go again. I've got enough fountain pens.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2006) (V)

Giant shadow.

I don't know why this movie doesn't work, but it doesn't. I guess I'd hold the writers and the actors responsible -- the direction is efficient and the score good.

The script tells us things that most of us already know, without adding much that we didn't. Thankfully it avoid extensive shots of the death camps. If anyone needs to be told about that, he's hopelessly benighted anyway. That mass genocide was perhaps the most horrible expression of the baser impulses of human nature, and like any transcendental event should be treated with caution, not with an eye to the box office.

Still, the dialog is flat and ordinary. Giant closeups of faces telling us important things -- "For the first time, I've realized I'm a Jew" -- doesn't really help. It's like being hit over the head by someone wielding a crowbar and yelling -- "GET IT? GET IT?" Yes, we get it. Stop already.

Kirk Douglas isn't bad. In fact he's pretty good, outdone only by Topol as an Arab sheyk -- "I course your Faddair." Cheese, Topol is good. And so is his role. He plays "The Sheik of Arabie" on a Victrola and rolls his eyes with glee.

John Wayne's performance is perfunctory and so is Frank Sinatra's, but the latter's involvement is interesting. At one point in the film he protests, "Don't leave me alone -- I'm anti-Semitic." Far from being anti-Semitic he was, let's say, pro-Semitic. Like a lot of recent immigrant families in the Northeast his had a keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of ethnicity, and Sinatra plumped for the strengths in Judaism. He envied and admired Jews for their family values and their solidarity, and even learned to read a little Hebrew. A scene in which he spurts seltzer water at an attacking Arab fighter is beneath comment.

Overall the film is not a success because it doesn't spell out in any detail exactly what Mickey Marcus actually DID for the Israelies. It won't do to have two minutes of Marcus telling them "Attack! Attack!," when ten times that amount is spent on an unconvincing adulterous affair with Senta Berger -- not that having such an affair with such a magnificent woman would be a blot on anyone's escutcheon. (I could never spell that word. It means "shield".) I guess it's worth watching once, just to remind us of a part of history that some of us have not bothered to look into. As a film, (shrug).