Hannibal Brooks

Brooks is a British prisoner of war. He is put to work at the zoo in Munich, looking after an Asian elephant called Lucy. When the city is bombed the zoo's director decides the animal has to be moved and gives the job to Brooks. On the road things go wrong with the guard, and Brooks takes the elephant and starts walking towards Switzerland. Mountain roads, villages, rivers, and German patrols behind them. And an American soldier he meets on the way wants to turn the whole thing into a war. Michael Winner directs the British film; a hundred and two minutes, with Oliver Reed as Brooks and Michael J. Pollard as the American. It is built as a war comedy, but there is an argument inside it: one man is trying to get an animal out of a war and the other wants to fight it, and the film finds neither of them ridiculous.