Twilight's Last Gleaming

Infobox Film
name = Twilight's Last Gleaming


imdb_id = 0076845
producer = Merv Adelson
director = Robert Aldrich
writer = Ronald M. Cohen and Edward Huebsch (screenplay)
Walter Wager (novel)
starring = Burt Lancaster
Richard Widmark
Charles Durning
Paul Winfield
music = Jerry Goldsmith
cinematography = Robert B. Hauser
editing = Michael Luciano
William Martin
Maury Winetrobe
distributor = Lorimar Productions
released = February 9, 1977
runtime = 146 min.
language = English

"Twilight's Last Gleaming" is a 1977 film directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark. It is loosely based on the 1971 novel, "Viper Three", by Walter Wager. It tells the story of Lawrence Dell, a renegade USAF general, who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana, threatening to launch the missiles and start World War III unless the President, played by Charles Durning, reveals the real reason why America fought in the Vietnam War.

A split screen technique is used at several points in the movie to give the audience insight into the simultaneously occurring strands of the storyline.

The film's title, which functions on several levels, is taken from "The Star-Spangled Banner", the national anthem of the United States of America::"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light / what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming."The film included in the cast such Hollywood notables as Melvyn Douglas, Vera Miles, Joseph Cotten and Burt Young.