The Angry Hills (film)
| The Angry Hills | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Robert Aldrich |
| Produced by | Raymond Stross |
| Written by | A. I. Bezzerides |
| Based on | the novel by Leon Uris |
| Starring |
Robert Mitchum Stanley Baker |
| Music by | Richard Rodney Bennett |
| Cinematography | Stephen Dade |
| Edited by | Peter Tanner |
| Distributed by | MGM |
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Release date
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Running time
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105 min. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,190,000 |
| Box office | $1,285,000 |
The Angry Hills is a 1959 film directed by Robert Aldrich, based on the novel by Leon Uris, and starring Robert Mitchum and Stanley Baker.
Set in Greece in 1941, before and after the German invasion, the film follows an American journalist who possesses a list of Greek resistance leaders. Having memorized the list he destroys it and is then pursued by various groups of people keen to have it: Communist resistance fighters, the Gestapo and Greek collaborators.
Uris' novel was published in 1955. Because of its Greek setting, Uris was hired to write the screenplay for Boy on a Dolphin.
Film rights were bought by Raymond Stross in England, who said he wanted Clark Gable for the lead. Stross eventually set up the film with MGM and New York's Cine World Productions, and announced Robert Mitchum would star. According to Mitchum, Alan Ladd was meant to play the lead but the producers drove out to Ladd's house and met him after "he'd just crawled out of his swimming pool and was all shrunken up like a dishwasher's hand. They decided he wouldn't do for the big war correspondent. So, what happened? Some idiot said, 'Ask Mitchum to play it. That bum will do anything if he has five minutes free.' Well I had five minutes free do I did it."
Pier Angeli was wanted for the female lead. Elizabeth Mueller was cast instead.
Leon Uris did the first draft of the screenplay. However Aldrich had it rewritten by A.I. Bezzerides, who had written Kiss Me Deadly for Aldrich.
The film was shot from June to December 1958.
Robert Aldrich had just made Ten Seconds to Hell in Germany. He later recalled:
I stayed to make The Angry Hills for Raymond Stross. He understood that Metro was buying film by the yard then, and Mitchum was reasonably hot. So they thought that as long as it was an hour and a half with Mitchum and some Greek scenery, it would work. Obviously it didn't... The Strosses of this world just hang back there and let you work your ass off, till you're all through, and then say, "Fine. Goody-bye. Thank you, very much." Despite whatever promises about length or final cut they made to you, they take it back then and do what they were going to do in the first place.
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