The 25th Hour (French: La Vingt-cinquième Heure) is a 1967 anti-war drama film directed by Henri Verneuil, produced by Carlo Ponti and starring Anthony Quinn and Virna Lisi.

[1][2] The film is based on the bestselling novel by C. Virgil Gheorghiu[3] and follows the troubles experienced by a Romanian peasant couple caught up in World War II.

The storyline includes Hungary's alliance with Nazi Germany, the forced cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union in 1940 and subsequent events in Central Europe during and after World War II.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther panned The 25th Hour as "... such a tasteless and pointless hodgepodge of deadly serious and crudely comic elements, of tragic historical allusions grossly garbled in specious movie terms, that it looms large as one of the most disreputable and embarrassing films in recent years ..." Crowther was especially critical of Anthony Quinn's character and performance: "... [T]here is no real continuity or real sincerity in the nature of the man.

"[5] Los Angeles Times film critic Philip K. Scheuer wrote: "One has to keep telling oneself what a good actor Anthony Quinn is in order to sustain interest ... For this odyssey of a wandering non-Jew takes up to 2 1/4 hours to say what it has to say, and even this doesn't add up to much which is new ..."[6]