Kelly's Heroes

Kelly's Heroes
Directed by	Brian G. Hutton
Produced by	Sidney Beckerman
Written by	Troy Kennedy-Martin
Starring	Clint Eastwood Telly Savalas Don Rickles Donald Sutherland Carroll O'Connor
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography	Gabriel Figueroa
Editing by	John Jympson
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)	June 23, 1970 (U.S.)
Running time	144 minutes
Country	United States Yugoslavia
Language	English German
Budget	$4 million[1]

Kelly's Heroes is an offbeat 1970 comedy/war film about a group of World War II soldiers who go AWOL to rob a bank behind enemy lines. Directed by Brian G. Hutton, who also directed the 1968 World War II drama Where Eagles Dare, the film stars Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Carroll O'Connor, with lesser roles played by Harry Dean Stanton, Gavin MacLeod, and Stuart Margolin. The screenplay was written by British film and television writer Troy Kennedy Martin.

Plot

In World War II France in early September 1944, units of the 35th Infantry Division are nearing the town of Nancy when one of the division's platoons receives orders to pull out while under attack from the Germans (much to the dismay of the men, who are eager to get into Nancy in order to find a decent place to get some rest). Kelly (Clint Eastwood), a former lieutenant who has been demoted to private as a scapegoat following a disastrous assault some time earlier, captures Colonel Dankhopf of German Intelligence. When Kelly notices his prisoner has a gold bar in his briefcase, he gets him drunk to try to get information about the gold. Before he is killed by an attacking German Tiger tank, the drunken Dankhopf blurts out that there is a cache of 14,000 gold bars (worth $16 million) stored in a bank vault 30 miles behind enemy lines in the town of Clermont (most likely Clermont-en-Argonne).

Kelly recruits the rest of his platoon, including skeptical Master Sergeant "Big Joe" (Telly Savalas), to sneak off and steal the gold. Eventually, others have to be recruited (or invite themselves) into the scheme, such as an opportunistic supply sergeant "Crapgame" (Don Rickles); a proto-hippie Sherman tank commander, "Oddball" (Donald Sutherland) - who spouts a number of counter-culture lines such as

"Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves."

A number of stereotypical G.I.s presented as competent, but war-weary veterans who are as much fed up with their incompetent or self-serving superiors as they are with the Germans.

The expedition successfully breaks through a German held town during a mortar barrage that has been arranged by Kelly. They then meet bad fortune when an American fighter plane mistakes Kelly's group for the enemy, shooting up their vehicles and destroying them with rockets, forcing them to continue on foot. Three die in a skirmish in and around a minefield. Meanwhile Oddball's tanks sneak and battle their way through the German lines, but their route is blocked when the last large bridge to Clermont is blown up by Allied bombers, prompting Oddball to let a bridge engineering unit in on the deal. When intercepted radio messages of the private raid are brought to the attention of gung-ho American Major General Colt, he misinterprets them as the efforts of aggressive patriots pushing forward on their own initiative and immediately rushes to the front line to exploit the "breakthrough".

Kelly's men race to reach the French town before their own army. There, they find it defended by three formidable Tiger I tanks with infantry support. The Americans are able to dispatch two of the Tigers and most of the German infantry. However, as they prepare to take on the last tank, which is parked right in front of the bank, Oddball's last Sherman breaks down and cannot be repaired. Powerless to defeat the heavily-armored behemoth, on Crapgame's suggestion, Kelly offers the German tank commander a share of the loot. After the Tiger blows the bank doors off, the assembled crew finds the gold cache. After dividing the loot, the men go their separate ways, just managing to avoid meeting the still-oblivious Colt, who is delayed by celebrating town residents.

Cast

Clint Eastwood as Private Kelly, the platoon's de facto leader Telly Savalas as Master Sergeant "Big Joe", the platoon's de jure leader Don Rickles as Staff Sergeant "Crapgame", the supply sergeant Carroll O'Connor as Major General Colt, the division commander Donald Sutherland as Sergeant "Oddball", leader of three Sherman tanks from the 321st. Gavin MacLeod as Moriarty, Oddball's bow machine-gunner and mechanic Stuart Margolin as Private "Little Joe" Jeff Morris as Private Cowboy Hal Buckley as Capt Maitland Dick Balduzzi as Private Fisher

Richard Davalos as Private Gutowski, the team's sniper Gene Collins as Private Babra Perry Lopez as Private Petuko Tom Troupe as Corporal Job Harry Dean Stanton as Private Willard Len Lesser as Sergeant Bellamy of the 42nd Engineers Bridging Unit. David Hurst as Colonel Dunkhepf, a German intelligence officer George Savalas as First Sergeant Mulligan, mortar section commander Karl-Otto Alberty as Waffen-SS Tiger tank No. 115 commander Ross Elliott as Major Booker

Production

The film was going to have a female role, but prior to filming, it was cut from the script. Ingrid Pitt, who was cast in the role revealed that she was "virtually climbing on board the plane bound for Yugoslavia when word came through that my part had been cut."^[2] The filming commenced in July 1969 and was completed in December^[1] and was shot on location in the Istrian village of Vižinada in the former Yugoslavia and London.^[3] Yugoslavia was chosen mostly because earnings from previous showings of movies in there could not be taken out of the country, but could be used to fund the production. Also the Yugoslav army had in its inventory U.S. Sherman tanks (part of the military aid packages received when Marshal Tito split ways with Joseph Stalin and the U.S. feared a Red Army intervention through Hungary).

Several years after the film was released, Eastwood claimed that the movie studio (MGM) made additional cuts to Hutton's final version of the film, eliminating scenes that gave depth to the main characters. The resulting edits, Eastwood said, made the characters look like "a bunch of goof-offs from World War Two."^{[citation needed]} Kelly's Heroes was the last non-Malpaso film that Eastwood agreed to appear in^[4] until In the Line of Fire. Bronco Billy was also made with a different company formed by Robert Daley (who produced 15 of his films from 1971-1980), due to Eastwood's divorce at the time.

There is a nod to Eastwood's spaghetti westerns in the standoff with the Tiger tank — a virtual remake of the ending of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, right down to the musical score.^[3]

This film was produced and released during the Vietnam War, and in the same political and cultural climate as M*A*S*H — the war-weary soldiers who "don't even know what this war's all about" (Big Joe's words to the German tank commander), the Liberation of Europe being the least of their problems as they set out to line their own pockets.

The U.S. troops wear the insignia of the US 35th Infantry Division. The division actually was in action around Nancy in France in September 1944. The film also uses authentic M4 Sherman tanks (from Yugoslav Army's reserves), while most other contemporary war films, for example Patton, employed too-modern M48 tanks. Because the Yugoslav Army was at the time armed with US arms and locally developed German World War II equipment, the German and American vehicles, machine guns, radios and entrenching tools are remarkably accurate. There is, however, one anachronism. Private Gutowski, the unit's sniper, should be armed with a US Model 1903A4 Springfield sniper rifle with an Unertl target scope. He instead has a Soviet-made Model 91/30 Mosin Nagant sniper rifle with a bent bolt and a PU 3.5X-power side-mounted scope, with a US GI bayonet tied into place on the muzzle. The three Tiger I Tanks used in the film were actually ex-Soviet Army T-34 tanks, converted in great detail by specialists of the Yugoslav army for the 1969 movie The Battle of Neretva.

The movie inspired the 1975 movie Inside Out, about ex-American World War II veterans who team up with ex-Nazi war criminals to con a former Nazi party leader into revealing the location of a secret shipment of gold.

Although he does not appear in the credits, future director John Landis worked as a production assistant. He also appeared in the movie, dressed as a nun. During the shooting of the picture in Yugoslavia, he wrote the first draft of what would eventually become An American Werewolf in London.

Reception

The film mostly received a positive reception and its anti-war sentiments were recognized.^[4] The film has a 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[5] The film was voted at number 34 in Channel 4's 100 Greatest war films of all time.^[6] The film grossed $5.2 million in the United States when it was released in June 1970.^[7]

Musical score and soundtrack

The main musical theme of the movie (at both beginning and end) is "Burning Bridges," sung by The Mike Curb Congregation with music by Lalo Schifrin. There is also a casual rendition of the music in the background near the middle of the movie. The Mike Curb Congregation's recording of "Burning Bridges" reached number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart on March 6, 1971.

The soundtrack to the film also contains the song, "All For the Love of Sunshine," which became the first No. 1 country hit for Hank Williams, Jr.. The inclusion of the song is one of the film's many anachronisms since it was not released until 1970, 25 years after the end of the war.

The soundtrack was released on LP, as well a subsequent CD featuring the LP tracks, by Chapter III Records. This album was mostly re-recordings. A CD containing the full score as well as the alternate LP tracks was released by Film Score Monthly.

Lalo Schifrin's "Tiger Tank" was also used in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds for the tension building end scenes.

The sound of the Tigers' turrets was used for the movements of the power lifters in Aliens.

See also

• Inside Out (1975)
• Three Kings (1999)

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Hughes, p.194
2. ^ Munn, p. 102
3. ^ ^{a b} McGilligan (1999), p.183
4. ^ ^{a b} McGilligan (1999), p.184
5. ^ "Kelly's Heroes". Rotten Tomatoes. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kellys_heroes/. Retrieved January 15, 2011. 
6. ^ channel 4 - 100 greatest war films of all time
7. ^ Hughes, p.196

Bibliography

• Hughes, Howard (2009). Aim for the Heart. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 9781845119027. 
• McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0006383548. 
• Munn, Michael (1992). Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. London: Robson Books. ISBN 086051790x. 

External links

• Kelly's Heroes at the Internet Movie Database
• Kelly's Heroes at AllRovi
• Kelly's Heroes at the TCM Movie Database
• Castle Beočin in Serbia (Major General Colt's headquarters)