The 25th Hour (1967 film)
| The 25th Hour (La Vingt-cinquième Heure) |
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| Directed by | Henri Verneuil |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Written by |
François Boyeur Wolf Mankowitz Henri Verneuil |
| Starring |
Anthony Quinn Virna Lisi |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Andreas Winding |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
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Release date
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Running time
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196 minutes (Europe) |
| Country | France Italy Yugoslavia |
| Language |
French English Romanian |
The 25th Hour (French: La Vingt-cinquième Heure) is a 1967 war drama film, starring Anthony Quinn and Virna Lisi. It was produced by Italian producer Carlo Ponti and directed by French director Henri Verneuil. The film is based on a novel by C. Virgil Gheorghiu. It follows the troubles experienced by a Romanian peasant couple caught up in World War II.
In a small village in Romania, a local police constable frames Johann Moritz (Quinn) on charges of being Jewish, because Moritz' wife, Suzanna, has refused his advances. Moritz is sent to a Romanian concentration camp as a Jew, Jacob Moritz. He escapes to Hungary with some Jewish prisoners where the Hungarians imprison them for being citizens of an enemy country (Romania). The Hungarians eventually send them to Germany to fill German "requests" for foreign laborers. In Germany Moritz is spotted by an SS officer who designates him as Aryan, frees him from the labor camp and forces him to join Waffen SS. After the war, Moritz is brutally beaten by Russians for being in the Waffen SS and then arrested and prosecuted as a Waffen SS war criminal by the Americans. Eventually he is released and re-united with his wife and sons in Germany.
The picture is based on the novel of the same name by Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu. The story line includes Hungary's alliance with Nazi Germany, the forced cession of Eastern Romania to the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequent events in central Europe during and after World War II.
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