The next-to-last movie by director Anthony Mann, and the last film that he finished, The Heroes of Telemark is more of a piece with other big-budget World War II action/adventure epics of its time, than it is with Mann's earlier, modestly proportioned thrillers, such as T-Men and Raw Deal -- though he does try valiantly to give the movie some of the personal, intimate elements seen in those early works. A successor to The Guns of Navarone (from the same studio), The Heroes of Telemark endeavors to tell a story of bravery and daring on a big scale, with lots of major set pieces. In this case, the story concerns the Allied attempts to destroy and disrupt the German nuclear effort in Norway. Mann's movie is more small-scale than, say, The Guns of Navarone and other all-star WWII epics of its time -- indeed, without the presence of Michael Redgrave in a surprisingly small supporting role, the only two box office names here would be Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris (who, in fairness, do enough so that audiences would not have felt cheated in the least). Mann and the script, by American blacklistee Ben Barzman and longtime Hollywood hand Ivan Moffat, attempt to impart an intimate dimension to the story by focusing on the humanitarian objections of Ulla Jacobson's Anna (the Douglas character's ex-wife), and adding one personal story to the array of Norwegian patriots. The former element creates some awkward (and unconvincing) moments in what is, otherwise, a fairly taut script that divides the movie into four sections: A prelude that is highly suspenseful, an informative and engrossing first act in which the sabotage mission is set up, a second act that seems, at first, to be frustratingly anti-climactic, and a third act that nearly loses its way amid those personal elements. It's as though the screenwriters and producers, having decided that Kirk Douglas had engaged in sufficient heroism in the first two-thirds of the film, now had to have room to act, and it distinctly changes the tone of the movie across the last 30 minutes. One other element of the movie that has not played well across the decades is the presence of Roy Dotrice, an actor best known in the years since for his portrayal of nefarious roles, in precisely such a part here, which makes his character's revelation no revelation at all. (And while we're about it, one is glad to see such veterans as Barry Jones and Mervyn Johns in supporting roles, and happy they got the work, but Johns looks decidedly older than his 66 years here, and much too old for the part he is playing). Mann tries to bring some personal touches to the film, but never quite succeeds, and we're left with an efficient but surprisingly low-key big-scale thriller, with some suspense but relatively few of the huge climaxes that audiences were used to in this kind of movie. In fact, it's a bit ironic that one of the biggest distractions to the kind of up-close tension one would expect is the sheer attractiveness of Robert Krasker's solor photography -- the snow-scapes and the skiing sequences are beautiful, and the latter almost hypnotic in their impact.