The Pride and the Passion

The Pride and the Passion is a 1957 Napoleonic era war film in Technicolor and VistaVision from United Artists, produced and directed by Stanley Kramer, that stars Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren. The film co-stars Theodore Bikel and Jay Novello. The film's storyline concerns a British Royal Navy artillery officer (Grant) who has orders to retrieve a huge siege cannon from Spain and transport it by ship to British forces. But first, the leader of the Spanish guerrillas (Sinatra) wants to transport the weapon 1,000 km across Spain to help in the recapture of the city of Ávila from the occupying French before he releases it to the British. Most of the film deals with the hardships of transporting the big gun to Ávila across rivers and through mountains, while also evading the occupying French forces that have been ordered to find it. A subplot concerns the struggle for the love of the Spanish woman Juana (Loren) by the two male protagonists. The screen story and screenplay by Edna Anhalt and Edward Anhalt was loosely based on the 1933 novel The Gun by C. S. Forester. Earl Felton did an uncredited screenplay re-write, George Antheil composed the music score, while Saul Bass designed the opening title sequence. The film's music score was the last important work by George Antheil, once famous as the "bad boy of music" in the 1920s. It is the only one of Antheil's many film scores to have been preserved on a commercial soundtrack recording.