OPERATION DAYBREAK

US, 1975, 119 minutes, Colour.
Timothy Bottoms, Martin Shaw, Joss Ackland, Nicola Pagett, Anton Diffring.
Directed by Lewis Gilbert.

Operation Daybreak: Lewis Gilbert directed several war tribute films of the 50s, including Reach for the Sky, Carve Her Name with Pride and Sink the Bismarck. Watching this film, it seems we are back in those times for it is the style of this tribute to the Czech resistance, its sabotage, the torture and the Lidice reprisals. There is colour, blood more apparent, and a mutual shooting death scene in a church crypt which indicate that we are in the 70s. Timothy Bottoms leads a British and Czech cast in a straightforward film that has suspense, a great sadness and the picturing of the futilities of war.

1. The interest of this kind of film as regards the war? History, the resistance, human values? The title and its implications?

2. Audience response to war films? The style of the 50s with their action pathos tributes to heroes in the light of the war experience? Their impact in later decades? This film as a 70s version of a 50s war film? The changes in style, similarities? Use of colour, more explicit violence? More direct presentation of realities, eg. the final deaths?

3. The importance of the fact that this was a true story? Audience response to the real people and events? The importance of showing the photos of the main characters at the end? With the details of their lives and deaths? Did this make the film seem more real? Its issues more credible?

4. What is the value of portraying such memories? As important for people who lived through them, the influence on another generation?

5. The background of the British making decisions about Czech resistance? What right did they have? The portrayal of the British, their choice of the men? Explaining the necessity of the mission and assassination? Their not considering the repercussions, eg. reprisals of this kind of action?

6. The question of political assassination and its morality? In a war situation as different from a peace situation? The consequences of assassination of Heydrich?

7. The importance of portraying the three men as ordinary, their farm and working backgrounds, their Czech loyalties, their knowledge of one another? Their training, the sequence of their landing, the importance of their task and their determination to carry it out?

8. How did the film delineate the characters of the three men and the audience interest in them and their mission? Jan, Karel, Joseph? How heroic were they, how ordinary? The fact that they ultimately succeeded, but not in a clean-cut swift job? The background of their failures? What would have happened if these men had not been involved in the war: family life, friends, the ordinariness of going to football matches and buying dresses as they discussed? The suffering imposed by life on these three men?

9. The portrayal of the Czech Resistance itself: the cover of the classes, the little girl on the bike and her ability to lead people, Aunt Marie and her house and its contents, her son and the music lessons? The husband and his lack of knowledge of what was going on? The importance of the information received, eg. about the railways? The role of the priest and the irony of his memorial service for Heydrich and his helping the Resistance? Was this an accurate presentation of the people involved in such resistance, the ordinary way of life, the limitations, the oppression by invaders and their loyalty? The film as a tribute to the Resistance?

10. How important was the film's building up of Heydrich? The opening and his being dressed and going to work, the Germanic type, the importance of his role in Czechoslovakia his relationship with Hitler? His snobbery towards the Czechs? His meticulous pattern of his work and the plans to assassinate him? His journey to Germany, reception by Hitler? The interweaving of the scenes of Heydrich and his progress and work in Czechoslovakia? With that of the Resistance? The plan for the attack on the train, for his car journey to work, the irony of his death, the injuries in the grenade attack, the hospitalisation? His death and preparation for burial? His funeral and memorial services?

11. How absorbing was the attempt at assassination in the train? The failure to realise suburban trains passing by windows? The final attempt and its preparation, the hurried aspects of the plan? The jammed gun, the throwing of the grenade, the run through the city pursued by the police, the bike ride etc.? How credible was this as an attempt at assassination?

12. The meticulous detail of investigation, the officers in charge, the importance of the reprisals and the collage visualising of the reprisals on Lidice? Audience response to such reprisals?

13. What motivated Karel in betraying the others? The importance of the sequences with his family, his confusion, love of family? His being presented as approaching the Germans, their battering him, his compliance with them, at Maria's house, at the church etc.? The affect of such betrayal on all of them?

14. The importance of the arrests and torture? Aunt Marie's son, his confessing the truth about the church to Karel? Aunt Marie and her husband being arrested?

15. The importance of the church sequences: being hidden by the priest under the church, the waiting for escape, the change with the siege, the violence of the siege? The fact that so many Germans were killed in the church itself?

16. The two remaining in the crypt, waiting, shooting, the smoke and the water, the girls waiting outside to see the end? The mutual shooting as the only way out? Audience response to this? Moral implications of death?

17. The heroism as a compulsion in a war situation? The film's comments on the realities of war and its effect on people?