an "ingenious thriller" and praised Garner, Saint, and Taylor for being "plausible in highly implausible roles." In the opinion of The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, "What is annoying about this picture is that the set-up for pulling off the plot is just too slick and artificial, too patly and elaborately contrived. ... Even though Mr. Seaton has done a thorough and careful job of staging this massive deception and has got his able cast to play it with reasonable assurance, it has such a synthetic look and, indeed, the idea is so theatrical that the whole thing rings curiously false." Garner wrote in his memoirs that he felt "the movie doesn't work because there's no suspense; everybody knew that in real life the D-Day invasion was a success and that we'd won the war", but he did enjoy working with Saint and George Seaton. Background Banner's role, which provided the comedy relief in 36 Hours, was the role model for his easy-going German soldier, POW camp guard Sgt. Hans Schultz, in the TV series Hogan's Heroes (1965–71). Coincidentally, Sig Ruman played a similar POW camp guard named Sgt. Schultz in the William Holden feature film Stalag 17 (1953). The film was remade as a 1989 TV movie, Breaking Point, starring Corbin Bernsen. See also List of American films of 1965 The Prisoner— 1960s Patrick McGoohan series with a somewhat similar premise References External links James Garner Interview on the Charlie Rose Show James Garner Interview at Archive of American Television 1965 films Films scored by Dimitri Tiomkin Films about amnesia Films based on short fiction Films based on works by Roald Dahl Films directed by George Seaton Films set in 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films Operation Overlord films World War II prisoner of war films Films set in Germany Films shot in California American World War II films Films produced by William Perlberg 1960s English-language films 1960s American films