The Heroes of Telemark bundles up the cast in woolly Norwegian ski sweaters, which is one way to pinpoint a drama's geographical center. The film was made in bleak, craggy Rjukan, Norway, site of the heavy-water plant marked for destruction in 1943 by a small band of Norwegian Resistance fighters in order to delay Germany's development of an atomic bomb.
Telemark is a palm-dampener when exiled Norseman Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris first parachute into the white northern wastes and go whooshing silently across the slopes, pursued by a gunner in a light plane or spectral Nazi ski troops. Director Anthony Mann...