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The Eagle Has Landed (film)

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The Eagle Has Landed
Directed byJohn Sturges
Written byJack Higgins (novel)
Tom Mankiewicz
Produced byDavid Niven, Jr.
Jack Wiener
StarringMichael Caine
Donald Sutherland
Robert Duvall
Jenny Agutter
Donald Pleasence
Anthony Quayle
Jean Marsh
Judy Geeson
Sven-Bertil Taube
Treat Williams
and Larry Hagman
Narrated byPatrick Allen
CinematographyAnthony B. Richmond
Edited byAnne V. Coates
Music byLalo Schifrin
Production
company
Distributed byCIC (UK)
Columbia Pictures (US)
Release dates
25 December 1976 (Sweden & Finland)[1]
31 March 1977 (UK)[2]
2 April 1977 (US)[2]
Running time
134 min (Sweden, Finland, UK)[1]
123 min (U.S.)[3]
131 min (US NTSC DVD version)[3]
130 min (regular PAL DVD version)[3]
145 min (extended PAL DVD 2 disc version)[3]
Country United Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget$6,000,000[4]

The Eagle Has Landed is a 1976 film version of the novel The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins. It was directed by John Sturges and starred Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall. It was Sturges' final film, and despite tension between Caine and Sturges, the film was quite successful upon its release and retained a cult following[citation needed].

Plot summary

The film begins with captured World War II 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 realizes 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 tantalizing intelligence - Winston Churchill is to visit an airfield near the 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 and with Hitler's knowledge. 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 Torpedos against British 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 plan is foiled when a German 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 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 Pitt (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 organizes 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 boat, Steiner makes one last attempt at Churchill. Steiner infiltrates the country house and apparently succeeds in shooting Churchill before being shot himself. However, when Captain Clark appears on the scene, he is informed that "Churchill" was actually an impersonator - the real Prime Minister is at the Tehran Conference.

With the failure of the operation, Radl is arrested and summarily executed by firing squad, under the pretext that he was "Giving orders beyond his control to a point of treason". Shortly before he is arrested, Radl orders his assistant Karl to leave Alderney immediately and return home to Germany, in order to avoid the same fate. In this way Himmler distances himself from the failed mission. In England, Devlin disappears to live in obscurity.

Cast

Production

Caine was originally offered the part of Devlin but did not want to play an IRA man so 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 then role.[4] 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 Cotes was the one who saved the movie and made it watchable.[5]

Extended version

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 US. 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). However, 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. This 15 minutes longer version contains a number of scenes that had been deleted even before the European cinema release:

  • An alternative opening: originally the film was intended to start with Heinrich Himmler (Donald Pleasence) arriving at Schloss Hohenschwangau for a conference with Hitler, Canaris, Bormann and Goebbels. This deleted opening would have preceded the scenes under the opening credits which are a long aerial shot of a staff car leaving the castle in question. The deleted scene explains why Schloss Hohenschwangau appears in the credits but does not appear in the film.
  • Extended scene when Radl arrives at Abwehr headquarters, he discusses his health with a German Army doctor (played by Ferdy Mayne).
  • Scene at a Berlin University where Liam Devlin is a teacher.
  • Scene in Landsvoort where Steiner and von Neustadt discuss the mission and its merits and consequences.
  • Devlin's arrival at Studley Constable is now extended where he and Joanna Grey discuss their part in the mission.
  • Devlin drives his motorbike through the centre of the village and on to the cottage, where he inspects the barn before returning to the village.
  • Scene where Devlin reads poetry to Molly Prior.
  • Extended scene in which Molly interrupts Devlin shortly after he receives the army vehicles.
  • Scene on the boat at the end that shows the fate of von Neustadt. (This scene is visible in one of the special edition DVDs extras, in the action photo gallery)

Filming locations

The majority of the film, set in the fictional village of Studley Constable, was filmed at Mapledurham in Oxfordshire and features the village church, Mapledurham Watermill and Mapledurham House. Mock buildings such as shops and a pub were constructed on site in Mapledurham while interiors were filmed at Twickenham Studios. The airfield scenes were filmed at Blackbushe Airport near Yateley in Hampshire.

The sequence set in Alderney was filmed in Charlestown, near St Austell in Cornwall. Some of the filming took place at RAF St. Mawgan, near Newquay, and at Rock, both in Cornwall. The railway station sequence where Steiner and his men make their first appearance was filmed in Rovaniemi, Finland.

The parachuting scenes were carried out by members of the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) Parachute Display Team.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Swedish Film Database fact sheet The Eagle Has Landed Retrieved 2012-01-02
  2. ^ a b IMDb: Release dates The Eagle Has Landed Retrieved 2012-01-02
  3. ^ a b c d IMDb: Main details The Eagle Has Landed Retrieved 2012-01-02
  4. ^ a b Glenn Lovell, Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008 p284-288
  5. ^ Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane, My Life as a Mankiewicz, University Press of Kentucky 2012 p 179
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