The Eagle Has Landed (film)

The Eagle Has Landed

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Sturges
Produced by
Screenplay by Tom Mankiewicz
Based on The Eagle Has Landed
by Jack Higgins
Starring
Narrated by Patrick Allen
Music by Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography Anthony B. Richmond
Edited by Anne V. Coates
Production
company
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 25 December 1976 (1976-12-25) (Finland and Sweden)
  • 31 March 1977 (1977-03-31) (UK)
  • 2 April 1977 (1977-04-02) (USA)
Running time
  • 134 minutes (Europe)
  • 123 minutes (USA)
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget $6,000,000[1]

The Eagle Has Landed is a 1976 British film directed by John Sturges and starring Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall.

Based on the novel The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins, the film is about a fictional German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill during the height of the Second World War. The Eagle Has Landed was Sturges' final film, and received positive reviews and was successful upon its release.[2]

Plot

The film begins with captured Second World War film footage of the rescue from Italy of Mussolini by German paratroopers. Inspired by the rescue of Hitler's ally Benito Mussolini by Otto Skorzeny, a similar idea is considered by Hitler, with the support of Himmler (Donald Pleasence). Admiral Canaris (Anthony Quayle), head of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), is ordered to make a feasibility study of the seemingly impossible task of capturing the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and bringing him to Germany.

Canaris considers the idea a joke, but realises that although Hitler will soon forget the matter, Himmler will not. Fearing Himmler may try to discredit him, Canaris orders one of his officers, Oberst Radl (Robert Duvall) to undertake the study, despite feeling that it is a waste of time.

An Unteroffizier on Radl's staff, Karl, finds that one of their spies, code named Starling, has provided tantalising intelligence – Winston Churchill is to visit an airfield near the (fictitious) village of Studley Constable in Norfolk, where Joanna Grey (Jean Marsh), a German sleeper agent lives. Radl comes up with a scheme that could work, called 'Eagle', where the kidnapping will proceed with German troops leading the action. He also is convinced that 'synchronicity' is behind it all, where actions and conditions merge at the proper moment, at the proper time. Himmler summons Radl and unofficially tells him to proceed, without notifying Canaris but with Hitler's knowledge, providing Radl with an 'authorising' letter signed by Hitler himself. Radl recruits Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland), a member of the IRA lecturing at a Berlin university, to the mission.

Radl looks for a suitable officer to lead the mission and chances upon the highly decorated and experienced, but conflicted and anti-Nazi, Fallschirmjäger officer Oberst Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine). While returning from the Eastern Front, Steiner intervened when SS soldiers rounded up Jews at a railway station in Poland, and attempted to save the life of a teenage girl who was shot while trying to escape. For this, he was court-martialled, along with a platoon of his men. Rather than face the firing squad, the men were allowed to transfer to a penal unit on the Channel Island of Alderney, where they made high risk attacks with Neger Manned Torpedoes against English Channel convoys.

Radl travels to Alderney and, with the help of Devlin, recruits Steiner and his surviving men. The team will parachute into England from a captured C-47 with Allied markings. The commandos outfit themselves as Polish paratroopers, as few of them speak English. The plan is to infiltrate Studley Constable, complete their mission, rendezvous with an E-boat on the nearby coast and escape.

The paratroopers land and the operation proceeds.

Radl visits Himmler to announce that "The eagle has landed", but then Himmler destroys the authorising document he'd given Radl, suggesting that Himmler invented Hitler's approval.

As the Germans take up positions in the town, the plan is foiled when a paratrooper rescues a local girl from certain death by a water wheel. He instead is killed in the process and his German uniform (worn under the Polish uniforms at the prior insistence of Steiner) is revealed to the onlooking villagers. The locals are rounded up into the village church, but Pamela Vereker (Judy Geeson), the sister of the village priest Father Vereker (John Standing), escapes to alert a unit of the United States Army Rangers stationed nearby. Inexperienced, glory-seeking Colonel Pitts (Larry Hagman) tries to foil the German plan almost single-handed but is killed by treasonous Nazi sympathizer Joanna Grey in her house, while his poorly-planned assault on the church fails with heavy casualties. Pitt's young deputy, Captain Clark (Treat Williams) then organises a second, successful attack.

Steiner's men sacrifice themselves to delay the Americans while Devlin, Steiner and his wounded second-in-command Neustadt (Sven-Bertil Taube) escape, with the aid of local girl Molly Prior (Jenny Agutter) who was romantically involved with Devlin. Instead of boarding the escape boat, Steiner vows to make one last attempt at Churchill.

Receiving radioed-news of the apparent failure of the operation, Radl orders his assistant Karl to leave Alderney immediately and return home to Germany, in order to avoid the fate Radl knows is forthcoming. Radl is then arrested and summarily executed by firing squad, under the pretext that he "exceeded his orders to the point of treason". In this way Himmler distances himself from the failed mission.

Steiner does manage to infiltrate the country house and apparently succeeds in killing Churchill before being shot and killed himself. Captain Clark, on scene, is stunned by Churchill's death, but is then informed by security personnel that "Churchill" was actually George Fowler, an impersonator – the real Prime Minister is at the Tehran Conference. Clark and a superior officer are also advised that, "No one will ever know about this. This never happened. It did not occur."

Devlin, evading capture, leaves a love letter for Molly, and disappears to live in obscurity.

Cast

Production

Development

Film rights were bought by Jack Wiener for Paramount in 1974.[3]

Casting and production

Caine was originally offered the part of Devlin but did not want to play an IRA man so he asked if he could have the role of Steiner. Richard Harris stepped into the part of Devlin but then it was felt he was too associated with financing the real IRA so Donald Sutherland was given the role.[1] Tom Mankiewicz thought the script was the best he had ever written "but John Sturges, for some reason, had given up" and did a poor job. He said editor Anne V. Coates was the one who saved the movie and made it watchable.[4]

Michael Caine had initially been excited at the prospect of working with Sturges. During shooting, Sturges confessed to Caine that he was only doing the film to earn enough money to go fishing. Caine wrote later in his autobiography: "The moment the picture finished he took the money and went. [Producer] Jack Wiener later told me [that Sturges] never came back for the editing nor for any of the other good post-production sessions that are where a director does some of his most important work."[5]

Filming locations

Cornwall was used to represent the Channel Islands, and Berkshire for East Anglia.[6] The majority of the film, set in the fictional village of Studley Constable, was filmed at Mapledurham on the A329 in Oxfordshire and features the village church, Mapledurham Watermill and Mapledurham House, which represented the Manor House where Winston Churchill was taken.[6] A fake waterwheel was added to the 15th century structure for the film.[6] Mock buildings such as shops and a pub were constructed on site in Mapledurham while interiors were filmed at Twickenham Studios. The "Landsvoort Airfield" scenes were filmed at RAF St Mawgan, five miles from Newquay.[6]

The sequence set in Alderney was filmed in Charlestown, near St Austell in Cornwall.[6] Some of the filming took place at Rock in Cornwall. The railway station sequence where Steiner and his men make their first appearance was filmed in Rovaniemi, Finland.[6] The parachuting scenes were carried out by members of the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) Parachute Display Team. The exit shots were filmed from a DC-3 at Dunkeswell Airfield in Devon. The landings onto the beach were filmed on Holkham Beach in Norfolk.

In the movie there is a scene where Radl and Karl look at an Ordnance Survey map with a magnifying glass, at an area just south east of present-day Wells Next The Sea. This seems to suggest that the filmmakers wanted 'Studley Constable' to be located between Warham, Wighton and Binham. This is only a few miles from Holkham where the parachute drop was actually filmed. Reading of the book suggests the fictional village may have actually been based on nearby Cley Next The Sea.

Release

The original running time for the film was 134 minutes in Europe, while 11 minutes were cut by the producers before the film was released in the United States. The US 131 minutes NTSC DVD version is close to the original European cinema version, and most European PAL DVD versions also have that length (130 minutes).

In 2004 Carlton Visual Entertainment released a two-disc PAL version which contains two versions of the film: the regular DVD version as well as an extended 145 minute version.[7] This 15 minutes longer version contains a number of scenes that had been deleted even before the European cinema release:[7]

Reception

The film was a success, Lew Grade saying "it made quite a lot of money".[8] ITC made two more films with the same production team, Escape to Athena and Green Ice.[9]

Critical response

In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film "a good old-fashioned adventure movie that is so stuffed with robust incidents and characters that you can relax and enjoy it without worrying whether it actually happened or even whether it's plausible."[2] Canby singled out the writing and directing for praise:

Tom Mankiewicz's screenplay, based on a novel by Jack Higgins, is straightforward and efficient and even intentionally funny from time to time. Mr. Sturges ... obtains first-rate performances building the tension until the film's climactic sequence, which, as you might suspect, concludes with a plot twist. ... With so many failed suspense melodramas turning up these days, it's refreshing to see one made by people who know what they're about.[2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Lovell, Glenn. Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges. University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, pp. 284–288.
  2. 1 2 3 Canby, Vincent (26 March 1977). "The Eagle Has Landed (1976)". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
  3. ↑ Canada Shooting For 'Last Castle' By A. M. WELLER. New York Times (1923-Current file) [New York, N.Y] 6 Oct 1974: 63.
  4. ↑ Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane, My Life as a Mankiewicz, University Press of Kentucky 2012 p 179
  5. ↑ Nixon, Rob. "The Eagle Has Landed". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The Eagle Has Landed film locations". Movie Locations. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
  7. 1 2 Koemmlich, Herr (22 Aug 2009). "The Eagle Has Landed". Movie Censorship. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
  8. ↑ Alexander Walker, National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties, 1985 p 197
  9. ↑ Lew Grade, Still Dancing: My Story, William Collins & Sons 1987 p 250
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