A little-known World War Two drama from Charlton Heston's CV, in which he plays the leader of an orchestra kidnapped by the Germans and forced to play for the Nazis to boost their morale. The film's patently absurd developments leave it looking like Escape to Victory with strings attached, as Heston, an unsympathetic cynic here, locks horns with the German authorities. Ubiquitous war film actors Anton Diffring and Maximilian Schell clash as nasty and not so nasty Nazis but the music (including selections from Schubert, Brahms, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky) is the real star. Based on the book The General by Alan Sillitoe, who also wrote the very different Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.


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