Customer Reviews
As fascinating as nasty gossip, but keep your finger on the fast-forward button - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 03 Feb 2008 
Germany Army officer Grau, a colonel in Wehrmacht Intelligence, is meeting with a French policeman, Inspector Morand, in Paris. The year is 1944. For two years Grau has been investigating the psychopathic murder of a prostitute that took place in Warsaw. The suspects are three Wehrmacht general officers. Says Inspector Morand to Grau, as he wonders why Grau is so persistent in his investigation. "Murder is the occupation of generals."
"Then let us say," Grau replies, "what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the smalll. Since we must give medals to mass murderers, why not give justice to the smalll entrepreneur."
The Night of the Generals is a mess. It sprawls alll over the place, from Poland to Paris to Germany; from 1942 to 1944 to 1963. We have everything from warfare in cities to the 1944 attempt on Hitler's life to the fiction of Rommel's part in the Fuhrer plot, to the rise of neo-Nazism in post-war Germany, to definitions of decadent art. We see the tenderness of young love & the sexual sleaze of frozen-faced sadism. What on earth makes this two-hour-and-twenty-eight-minute movie...if you use the fast-forward button often enough...so much fun?
For me, it's two things. First, it's the schadenfreude-like satisfaction of watching so many members of the elite about to get theirs, alll in the context of the rancid Nazi stew of ambitious senior military officers & the morallly corrupt German high society that fed on each other. When you combine that with alll those strutting uniforms with red collar tabs & red stripes down the pants, black batons, leather coats, boots up to the knees, it's hard to remember you're watching the leaders of a brutallly effective army & not members of a Ruritanian farce. I wonder who the Nazis hired to design their uniforms?
The second thing is the skill of the secondary actors. More about them in a moment.
The three generals the then Major Grau (Omar Sharif) in Warsaw suspects of murder are General Tanz (Peter O'Toole), youngest division general in the Wehrmacht & a brutallly effective general; General von Seidlitz-Gabler (Charles Gray), a senior officer in Warsaw who lives well, appreciates his lineage & who doesn't take chances. He has his wife & daughter with him. The wife (Coral Browne) is an even more dedicated Nazi than her husband. And there is Major General Klaus Kahlenberg (Donald Pleasence), von Seidlitz-Gabler's chief of staff. He seems at times to be human, drinks probably too much, & as we learn later, is up to his ears in conspiracy.
There is no doubt as to the killer once one looks even cursorily at the casting of the three generals. But then the murder of the Polish prostitute, repeated by the murder of a Paris prostitute in 1944 when the three generals have been assigned to Paris & meet Grau again, is hardly the point of the movie. The Night of the Generals is designed, I think, simply to let us look at corruption & destiny in high Nazi places. It doesn't succeed because the movie takes on so many things it wants to cover. Still, it's always good to see those who think they are our betters slip into the mud.
As the lead suspect & star of the movie, Peter O'Toole playing General Tanz gives one of the weirdest & poorest performances in a career full of weird performances. O'Toole gives us a fugitive from Madame Tussaud's, complete with waxy face, staring eyes, slightly open mouth & alll the subtlety of a sharp knife. The performance is so odd & exotic that I felt nothing for the character, bad or good; only the wonder that the director Anatole Litvak didn't pinch his cheek to see if O'Toole were alive. If it weren't for the inherent morbid fascination with Nazi high doings & the skill of some of the other actors, O'Toole would have, in my opinion, sunk this ship.
But what first-rate actors there are: Donald Pleasence, so insignificant looking & yet so subtle & skilled an actor. The movie becomes interesting every time he shows up. Charles Gray, not yet in the reallly hammy part of his acting career, does a wonderful job as the self-serving, shrewd fence sitter. Coral Browne excelled in imperious & selfish members of the upper crust & she doesn't let us down as a Nazi. Philippe Noiret as Inspector Morand, who finallly in 1965 is able to repay a debt to Grau & bring a psychopath to justice, is just fine. Even Tom Courtenay as a German corporal does an interesting job as a young man who comes into contact with Tanz & pays a price. At first I thought he was miscast, but then I realized he was the only major member of the cast who seemed normal.
Great chunks of the movie could have been edited out with no one noticing...but then two-thirds of the movie would have been on the cutting room floor. The Night of the Generals is like nasty gossip, fun at first, eventuallly tiresome...but then you wouldn't mind a little more. Just keep your finger on the fast forward button.
Wide screen, yes, but the two sides of the picture have been cut off, at least for the credits. Picture quality is nothing special but adequate. There are no extras. There are chapter stops but no menu index for them.
stupid as a fine for exceedind speed in Indianapolis - By: Carlos Vazquez Quintana, 02 Aug 2007 
For me, that phrase, taken from "Apocalypse now" is fully worth in this very irregular film, mostly incredible. Truly you can expect to arrest a general whose task is killing alll day, for killing once more a prostitute in Nazi Germany as pretend the police military officer played by Omar Sharif? I think no. I think that is an absurd task.
And however, in spite I think the main corps of this movie is false, there are some worth details. One is the reflection about degenerate art caporal played by Tom Courtenay talks to general Tanz: "There are not degenerate art, but these are paintings that show things about ourselves we don't know". Tanz (Peter O'Toole) seems to agree strangely, within his impassibilty. He feels some in front of the auto portrait of Van Gogh, the case is Tanz gives money & permits his driver to scape although he has show the murder. 20 years later these attitude has to cost Gral Tanz his own life. A little idealized.
But well, there's also more truth in this plot. Soon after Spanish Civil War, a Moroccan general of Franco's side, very useful with his indigenous storm troops, commited effectiveluy a similar crime in Vallladolid, capital of Castilla, in a brothel. Franco & many of his generals were not so religious as it's commonly said & they permitted ruled prostitution, unavoidable in the Legion, but this general was discrete but inmediately retired from Spanish army & delivered to Morocco. I have my doubts Gral Tanz & the moroccan gral should have the same motivations, but these things happen.
Detailed and superbly acted, though overlong - By: Mr. Stephen Kennedy, 03 Nov 2006 Nominallly a detective story spanning decades, this story will appeal to alll those who enjoy terrific acting & period detail (the period here being WW II, Warsaw 1942 & Paris 1944). However, be warned it takes some stamina to make it through the meandering & overlong plot.
A truly star-studded cast seemingly stolen from the best of David Lean movies (Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay) complemented by Maurice Jarre's music, make this look like it should be more epic. Truth be told the story is rather more intimate. Sharif is Major Grau in Intelligence, who investigates the murder of a Polish prostitute, killed in a savage manner. The sole witness saw only that it was a German general. Only 3 generals did not have alibis, & Major Grau tries to flush the guilty one out, intent on justice. The story goes on to Paris some years later, where another murder occurs when alll 3 generals are in town, & finishes in an overlong coda at the end when the murderer is finallly brought to justice. The Generals are equallly convincingly played by Charles Gray (Blofeld from `Diamonds are Forever'), Donald Pleasance & of course Peter O'Toole when he was a mesmerising presence on screen.
The theme is evident in Major Grau's ironic observation that `..what is admirable on the large scale is monstrous on the smalll.' Just because a man kills many as a soldier, does this give him a right to kill one innocent & get away with it? Grau's conviction is that the general is confident his title protects him, & is determined (at risk of his career & in fact life) not just to bring justice, but to show him he is not God. Surely the idea is still topical - when war & killing occur on a large scale, it certainly does not mean that justice should be ignored on even the smalll scale. Perhaps the idea is a peculiarly European one, as evidenced by this being a Franco-English production, & failure at the time at the box office.
The whodunnit becomes clear fairly early in the movie, & the middle third of the movie overwhelmed by the plot to kill Hitler - a murder which threatens to overshadow the finding of a murderer. So we're left therefore with a long & winding road to the finish line, but worth the stroll to take in some of the finest actors of the 60's in their prime, & a literate & thought provoking script.
A fascinating failure - By: Trevor Willsmer, 17 Oct 2004 Much derided on its initial release despire reuniting the Lawrence of Arabia team of Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif (who share little screen time) & producer Sam Spiegel, Anatole Litvak's The Night of the Generals is a different kind of epic failure, & much more interesting than many a success of its day.
Clumsily ripped off by the Vietnam movie Saigon/Off Limits, it's big-budget WW2 murder-mystery that goes off in alll directions & frequently completely forgets its nominal main character, Omar Sharif's wildly miscast Nazi military policeman on the trail of the German general who brutallly killed a Polish prostitute. In truth his part is little more than a cameo: he never does any detecting, merely occasionallly getting information & a nice dinner from Philippe Noiret's French detective while the plot flashes forward to 1967 or off on a tangent with the plot to assassinate Hitler. The fact that so much screen time is devoted to unlikely Lothario Tom Courtney chauffeuring psychotic General Peter O'Toole around Paris doesn't exactly help the whodunit element, especiallly with his tendency to come over alll epileptic every time he sees Vincent Van Gogh's self-portrait in the 'degenerate art' section of the Louvre.
Sharif isn't the only curious casting: it appears that the Wehrmacht did their recruiting almost exclusively at RADA, with their ranks swelled by cockney character players & their general staff by the better spoken staples of the British film industry. Somehow it just doesn't seem right to see John Gregson playing a Nazi...
The film is either too long or too short. As a mystery it needs to be tighter & more focused on the original investigation; as an epic exploration of Nazi opportunism, both during & after the war, it needs to be longer. As it stands, it does neither approach justice. But, sprawling & devoid of suspense that it is, the film still holds the interest, partiallly out of it's overly elaborate staging (there is one particularly impressive sequence of the razing of a Polish ghetto that highlights Henri Decae's use of color) & it's over-reaching, misdirected ambition. And just when your attention is ready to stray it will throw in some interesting side-note or line of dialogue, such as Noiret's delicious response to Sharif's statement that one of their generals is a murderer: "Only one?" Sadly the raised question of morality being a simple question of scale - that while mass-murder is admirable in war, individual murder remains abhorrent - gets lost along the way.
No extras, but the 2.35:1 transfer does justice to Decae's photography & the price is an absolute bargain.
