36 Hours (1964)

Thriller, War
James Garner, William Smith, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Taylor
On April 15, 1944, Allied powers met to discuss plans to invade the European continent. On June 1st, 1944, London-based U.S. intelligence officer Major Jeff Pike, who was at that April meeting, is tasked with contacting his regular sources in Lisbon to discover if the Nazis are aware of the plan to land at Normandy, or if they are still expecting what would be the more logical route to land at Calais, the imminent actual invasion planned for the 5th dependent on what Jeff is able to discover. The Nazis have their own plan for Major Pike when he lands in Portugal. Led by Major Dr. Walter Gerber who has conducted 17 similar and all successful intelligence operations albeit on lesser ranking military personnel with less pertinent information, the Nazis, in an elaborate ruse, are going to abduct Pike in Lisbon and have him willingly provide information on the invasion by tricking him in believing that he is recuperating from war sustained injuries, including amnesia, at a U.S. military hospital in Germany--in 1950, the Allied-won war long over. Beyond Gerber as Jeff's doctor, one other key person in the ruse is Anna Hedler, who is to act as his primary nurse as well as his love interest in the hopes that he will open up to her. Not all is copacetic within the Nazi ranks as Gerber discovers just before Pike is to awaken in 1950 from his drug-induced slumber, that he only has thirty-six hours to gather whatever information he can before the SS, skeptical of Gerber's methods, takes over to employ their more traditional interrogation methods on Pike, the SS, and Gerber, who may thus be working at cross purposes from each other. What may be a factor into what happens is Hedler, who has her own motivations the result of her heavily-scarred war history.—Huggo
  • 1964-11-26 Released:
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