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This movie was the first movie produced in Israel. It deals with the outbreak of hostilities during the war for independence in 1947. Hill 24 is one of the foothills dominating the approach to Jerusalem. The night before a cease-fire, to be imposed by the United Nations to stop the Israeli-Arab war, four Israeli volunteers set out to hold the hill until morning, in order to be able to claim it for Israel. The four men exchange their stories on the way to Hill 24: Adventure/War/Drama very well made/regarded.
HILL 24 DOESN’T ANSWER
Among the first features produced in the State of Israel, “Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer” was also the last film to be directed by Thorold Dickinson, a British director best known for the gothic thrillers “Gaslight” (1940) and “The Queen of Spades” (1949). “Hill 24,” released in 1955, has no obvious gothic elements but manages to be just as claustrophobic and doom-laden as Dickinson’s more famous films.
Dickinson begins with a series of shots of bodies face down in the dust, suggesting that all will not turn out well. Then he shifts into a complex flashback structure, as three members of a small Israeli unit trying to claim a hill overlooking Jerusalem in the last days of the 1947 conflict recount how they came to be there. A former British officer (Edward Mulhare) is drawn to the Israeli cause by his infatuation with a beautiful student (Haya Harareet); an American tourist (Michael Wager) becomes obsessed with visiting the Old City of Jerusalem; an Israeli officer (Arich Lavi) finds himself face to face with a former German soldier fighting on the Palestinian side.
If the film was meant as propaganda, it’s of a particularly perverse kind: there are no calls to glory, no heroic exploits to invite imitation, only the spectacle of a few individuals acting on a sense of personal obligation with little expectation of success. Dickinson stages much of the action at night, and the Israeli raid on the Old City becomes a study in combat noir, exploring all the expressionist possibilities of Jerusalem’s narrow streets and vertiginous drop-offs. The film is being issued by the New Jersey company Ergo Media (ergomedia.com) http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/