Clint Eastwood did 'Kelly's Heroes' in Istria

Posted March 2nd by Braddock Family in Croatia, Istria, movies

As it turns out, yet another town in Istria was used in a Hollywood production. The well-known film Kelly’s Heroes, starring Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas, was filmed in Vižinada, not far from Poreč, in 1970.

The plot deals with a platoon of jaded American soldiers trying to steal a bank-full of Nazi gold and the town plays the role of a small French town, Clermont, near Nancy, where the bank is located.

Anyone who has seen the movie will recognize the bell-tower and other buildings on the square in this picture. A German Tiger tank sitting in the middle of the shot is all thats required to turn it into WW2 France.

It seems that though American films could be screened in communist Yugoslavia, the movie companies couldn’t take their profits from the country. Therefore, they spent their dinars on making new movies here.

The Tiger tank (really a dressed up Russian vehicle) used in Kelly’s Heroes had starred the year before in the Yugoslav film, The Battle of Neretva, which had Yul Brynner and Orson Welles in it.

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6 comments to... “Clint Eastwood did 'Kelly's Heroes' in Istria”

Miquel
March 2nd, 2009

The unfortunate thing is that for some reason, Croatia is always being shown as somewhere else. It’s rare that a foreign production actually shows it for being Croatia. And to just add on to the irony, do you remember that the Casino Royale was supposed to be in Montenegro? Naturally, why on earth would you film that in Montenegro when you can film it in the Czech Republic. Weird fate to befall the former Yugo countries.

While Old Surehand was one of the Spaghetti Westerns that they shot in Croatia, the real shock to me was how much of Fiddler on the Roof was shot in the country. I saw that movie a long, long time before my first trip to the country, so of course I didn’t recognize anything. Probably should watch it again and see if anything sticks out.

Sea Kayak Croatia
March 2nd, 2009

Thanks for these other films I didn’t know about, Miquel. The Bond film still confuses many – “What do you mean it wasn’t shot in Montenegro!?”

Miquel
March 5th, 2009

When M tells Bond that Le Chiffre has set up a high stakes poker game at the Casino Royale in Montenegro, it’s all a farce. None of what was seen was actually shot in the real Montenegro. The train scene for instance was the first tip off as I’ve ridden the train from Bar to Beograd and nowhere does the train ride anything like what you see with Bond and Vesper. I’ve heard that Montenegro paid some money to have be mentioned as the location, but I have no fact to back this up.
In theory this was due to their impending separation from Serbia in 2006. The filmmakers saw the region as being unstable for shooting.