During the 1956 Hungarian uprising, an American mercenary is hired to smuggle a Hungarian resistance leader out of Soviet-occupied Budapest.During the 1956 Hungarian uprising, an American mercenary is hired to smuggle a Hungarian resistance leader out of Soviet-occupied Budapest.During the 1956 Hungarian uprising, an American mercenary is hired to smuggle a Hungarian resistance leader out of Soviet-occupied Budapest.
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- (as Georg Köváry)
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Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaRichard Widmark's wife, Jean Hazlewood, wrote the screenplay. It was her only screenwriting credit.
- GoofsAlthough the film is set in 1956 Hungary. The opening title of the movie is The Austrian-Hungarian Border 1960.
- Quotes
Jancsi: That would be convenient wouldn't it? You've made arrangements, certain plans to deliver me from my enemies into the hands of Herr Scheffler. You overlooked one thing only - I don't choose to leave my country.
Michael Reynolds: Sir, you don't have a choice, your time is up.
Jancsi: If that is so, Mr Reynolds, I'll die here.
Michael Reynolds: Why do you have to die? What for? I don't believe in it. Look, I came here to save your neck and I'm going to do it, even if you don't want it saved.
Jancsi: Whatever I do with my life is my own business. No one else's.
Michael Reynolds: Oh, you don't understand. In an few days you won't have a life.
The Count: We know our position better than you do.
Michael Reynolds: No, you don't! Scheffler is a pipeline. If he says I've got two days to get you out, you've got two days. Now, you can wait here like sitting ducks or you can do something. But there's a way out. If you're reasonable, you'll take it.
Jancsi: There's no profit for you, don't bother about that.
Michael Reynolds: Alright, I'm being paid. I know you'd like it better if I was some great humanitarian who believed in your cause. Well, I don't even know what your cause is.
The Count: That shouldn't surprise us.
Michael Reynolds: Well, who does outside this room? You could yell your heads off, nobody'd hear you. They aren't listening. They're all like me, I promise you; they couldn't care less. Causes are outmoded. Everybody's learned to live by compromise. Why can't you?
Jancsi: There isn't any compromise. To compromise is to doubt your own convictions. If they're worth having, they're unshakeable.
Michael Reynolds: Convictions are fine, if you live.
Jancsi: Mr. Reynolds, if I can live one day to save one person, that's enough.
Michael Reynolds: But you can do more than that on the outside. Unless you're determined to die a a martyr. And a crackpot!
It's easy to base a film on an Alastair MacLean novel, but hard for director Phil Karlson to make a boring film, but that's what Widmark and Karlson succeeded in doing. The cinematography was so drab in Vienna and in Zurich Switzerland standing in for Budapest that I fell asleep. Color might have helped, but one of the best espionage stories ever done was also filmed in black and white in Vienna, that being The Third Man. That is certainly not boring.
Richard Widmark plays an American agent who is asked to do a job and get a Hungarian resistance leader in Walter Rilla out from behind the iron curtain. Rilla is reluctant to go and at first his daughter Sonia Ziemann is reluctant to cooperate.
For a MacLean novel it has a lot less plot twists than normal. You want to see MacLean done right for the big screen checkout Where Eagles Dare.
Dick Widmark never produced another film again, wonder why.
- bkoganbing
- Jul 31, 2010
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Details
- Runtime1 hour 52 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1