How to Stop Hitler’s Nuke with Wool Sweaters, Cross-Country Skis, and Kirk Douglas’s Cleft Chin
It’s 3:15 AM. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed with coarse sandpaper, the cold pizza on my desk is starting to look back at me, and I am currently witnessing Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, dressed in thick, chunky woolen knits, skiing down a Norwegian mountain at Mach 3 while Nazi soldiers with MP40 submachine guns miss every single shot.
Welcome, my friends, to the freezing, high-stakes, and gloriously retro world of Anthony Mann.
If you’ve never heard of Anthony Mann, congratulations: you’ve never appreciated a director who enjoyed making his actors suffer for their art. For the uninitiated, Mann was famous for directing gritty, psychological Westerns and massive historical epics. His filmmaking method for this World War II thriller was brutally simple:
- Don’t use cozy Hollywood soundstages or fake studio snow. Pack up your cameras and drag your entire cast to the actual, freezing-cold fjords of Norway.
- Hire two of the biggest, most stubborn ego-giants in Hollywood history (Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris) and make them freeze their assets off in sub-zero temperatures.
- Turn a real-life, silent, stealthy sabotage mission into a massive, explosive action movie filled with gunfights and dramatic ski jumps.
The result? The Heroes of Telemark (1965).
The “Plot” (If we can even call it that)
The year is 1942. The Germans are occupying Norway and operating a heavily guarded hydroelectric plant in Vemork. Why? Because they are using it to manufacture “heavy water”—which is basically regular water with extra neutrons that Hitler needs to build an atomic bomb.
If the Nazis get the bomb, the war is over. Enter Knut (Richard Harris), a rugged, brooding Norwegian resistance leader, and Dr. Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas), a smug, playboy physics professor who would rather drink champagne with local women than fight fascists. Knut drags Rolf into the frozen wilderness, where they must lead a small, ragtag team to infiltrate the fortress-like plant, blow up the heavy water supply, and later sink a massive transport ferry before the Germans can ship the spicy water to Berlin.
It is a classic “men on a mission” movie, except the entire mission takes place on skis, and everyone looks like they stepped out of a retro winter fashion catalog.
Why You Need to Watch This Tonight
- The Battle of the Egos: Watching Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris share a screen is like watching two silverback gorillas argue over a banana. Douglas brings his classic, jaw-clenching, macho American energy (complete with a cleft chin so deep you could probably hide a microchip in it). Meanwhile, Harris brings his moody, method-acting, “I’m-too-cool-for-this-script” British intensity. They spend half the movie yelling at each other in the snow, and it is magnificent.
- The Real History vs. Hollywood: The real-life operation (Operation Gunnerside) was actually far more badass than the movie. In reality, the Norwegian commandos snuck in, blew up the plant, and escaped without firing a single shot or losing a single man. But because this is a 1960s Hollywood movie, Anthony Mann had to add massive explosions, frantic car chases, and Kirk Douglas physically wrestling German officers on a sinking boat.
- The Pre-James Bond Ski Chases: Long before Roger Moore skied off a cliff in The Spy Who Loved Me, this movie set the gold standard for cinematic ski action. The camerawork on the snowy slopes is genuinely spectacular, especially considering the heavy, clunky camera gear they had to haul around in 1965.
The Verdict
Is it a good movie? It is an absolute blast. It has that grand, sweeping, cinematic scale that you only get from mid-century Hollywood epics. It’s got the grit of The Guns of Navarone, the freezing tension of The Great Escape, and enough retro wool sweaters to keep you warm through a Siberian winter.
My Rating: 4 out of 5 barrels of heavy water rolling down a snowy fjord.
Wanna see some classic, freezing-cold sabotage?
Grab a warm blanket, hot cocoa, and go search for this classic WWII thriller on your favorite streaming or archive platform. Since it’s a beloved mid-sixties classic, it’s widely available for you to watch whenever you need a dose of old-school, non-CGI action.
[WATCH “THE HEROES OF TELEMARK” ON YOUTUBE (Opens in a new window)]
