The Heroes of Telemark

The Heroes of Telemark (1965) is a British war adventure you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Anthony Mann, the film stars Kirk Douglas as reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen and Richard Harris as resistance fighter Knut Straud — two men who have to trust each other long enough to destroy a mountain factory producing the one substance the Nazi atomic programme cannot do without.

The plant at Rjukan in occupied Norway is the target. The problem is getting there. Pedersen knows the science; Straud knows the mountains. Neither particularly likes the other, and every delay gives German engineers more time to ship their product to the Reich. Mann shoots the Norwegian highlands with the same sweeping eye he brought to westerns, turning blizzards and fjords into as much of an obstacle as any enemy patrol.

The operation was real — a 1943 mission carried out by Norwegian commandos that set back German weapons research without a single civilian casualty. Stream The Heroes of Telemark (1965) online on iFILM.