Ni Liv

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Ni Liv (en. Nine Lives) is a 1957 Norwegian movie about Jan Baalsrud, who was a member of the Norwegian resistance during World War II. In 1943, he and numerous other soldiers embarked on a dangerous mission to destroy a German air control tower and recruit for the resistance. This mission was compromised when he and his fellow soldiers, seeking a trusted resistance contact, accidentally made contact with an ordinary civilian who betrayed them to the Nazis.

The movie was directed by Arne Skouen. In 1991 Norwegian television viewers voted it the best Norwegian movie ever made [1]. The movie is based on the book "We Die Alone" by David Howarth.

The morning after their blunder, their boat — containing 8 tons of explosives intended to destroy the air control tower — was attacked by a German vessel. The Norwegians destroyed their boat by exploding their payload, and Baalsrud and some other surviving soldiers fled.

They swam ashore in ice cold arctic waters, and Baalsrud was the only one to escape the Nazi onslaught and, soaking wet and missing one shoe, he escaped up a ravine and shot and killed one of the enemy soldiers. He evaded capture for roughly two months, suffering from frostbite and snow blindness. He failed in his bid to reach the border of neutral Sweden and threw himself on the mercy of some Norwegian citizens who happened to have access to the Norwegian underground. While hiding in their barn, he amputated a significant number of his own frostbitten toes with an ordinary knife.

These citizens managed to move Baalsrud close to the Swedish border, but were forced to leave him in a snow cave for roughly two weeks before they returned and delivered him to a reindeer herder who finally took him over the frontier to safety.

He recuperated in a Swedish hospital for seven months, returned to England through South-Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and America before rejoining the fight.^[1]

In 1958 the movie was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Palm. In 1991 Norwegian telvision audiences voted the movie to be the best Norwegian movie ever made.

[edit] External links

• Ni Liv at the Internet Movie Database
• New York Times Review from 1959
• Howarth, David (1999). We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance. The Lyons Press.

1. ^ Eventyret om Oppegård (Norwegian) (2001). Retrieved on 2006.07.10.