Operation Daybreak ** (1975, Timothy Bottoms, Martin Shaw, Anthony Andrews, Anton Diffring, Joss Ackland, Nicola Pagett) – Classic Movie Review 9,090

Lewis Gilbert’s 1975 wartime historical drama thriller film Operation Daybreak is a well-intentioned account of the Czech underground’s attempt to assassinate SS general Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.

Director Lewis Gilbert’s 1975 World War Two wartime historical drama thriller film Operation Daybreak is a well-intentioned but longueur-ridden account of the Czech underground’s attempt to assassinate Reichsprotektor SS-General Reinhard ‘Hangman’ Heydrich, Hitler’s right-hand man and head of the Nazi security services, appointed Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia.

It starts with the UK deciding to send a group of three British-trained Czech commandos to Prague in 1942 to kill ‘The Butcher of Prague’. General František Moravec (Nigel Stock) commands the three partisans – Jan Kubiš, Jozef Gabčík and Karel Čurda – to undertake the crucial military operation, Operation Anthropoid. 

Operation Daybreak has a fine cast and crew, and the production is immaculate, but there is not enough action and there are too many talky pauses.

In the film’s best performance, Anton Diffring is outstanding as acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard. Timothy Bottoms, Martin Shaw and Anthony Andrews are intense and sincere as the three young Czech sergeants, Jan Kubiš, Karel Čurda and Jozef Gabčík.

Ronald Harwood’s screenplay is based on Alan Burgess’s 1960 fact-based novel Seven Men at Daybreak.

Also in the vintage cast are Joss Ackland, Nicola Pagett, Anton Diffring, Carl Duering, Diana Coupland, Cyril Shaps, Ronald Radd, Kim Fortune, Ray Smith, George Sewell, Philip Madoc, Kika Markham, Nigel Stock, Cyril Cross, Vernon Dobtcheff, Aubrey Woods, William Lucas, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Pavla Matéjuvská, and Neil McCarthy. But there is a cast of thousands: about 3,000 actors of German, French, Finnish and Czech origin.

Gilbert replaced the actor playing Adolf Hitler because he was too small.

Despite the European filming and personnel, it is entirely American produced and financed, produced by Carter DeHaven for Howard R Schuster Inc and American Allied Studios.

It was mostly shot on location in Prague, using locations that were part of the real assassination, as well as at the city’s Barrandov Studios.

It was retitled The Price of Freedom in the US.

Gilbert called it a ‘good film that came along 15 years too late. There was nothing in it for people to relate to.’

On the strength of it, Albert Broccoli hired Gilbert to direct The Spy Who Loved Me.

Warner Bros gave it a limited release in the US on November 1975, and it was released in the UK on 29 February 1976 by Columbia-Warner Distributors.

Diffring was in his mid-50s though Heydrich was 38 when he died.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 9,090

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