The Jackal (1973)
The Jackal (Original title: The Day of the Jackal) is a British-French thriller by Fred Zinnemann from 1973 with Edward Fox in the title role and Michael Lonsdale as his pursuer. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth and describes, based on real historical processes (the assassination attempt by Petit-Clamart ), the meticulous planning of an assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle by a paid killer and the cat-and-mouse The assassin's game with the French police.
action
prehistory
Consisting mainly of ex-military and foreign legionnaires existing right-wing French underground organization OAS sees a traitor in Charles de Gaulle because French President Algeria after the Algerian war has granted independence. In August 1962, an assassination attempt on him failed again. In the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart , the president's car was shot at with automatic weapons, but de Gaulle was unharmed. The conspirator Bastien-Thiry is sentenced to death and ends up in front of the firing squad in Fort d'Ivry .
As a result, the three-man top organization around Colonel Marc Rodin retreats to the Austrian mountains. A new attack is to be prepared. It is clear to the group that it failed, among other things, because it was infiltrated by informers and plans are therefore doomed to failure from the outset. Therefore, the leaders decide to hire an outsider. Rodin's choice falls on an English professional killer who calls himself "The Jackal" - an ice-cold professional. The Englishman also seems so suitable because he has excellent references and has never worked in France.
Preparations for the attack and countermeasures
Three weeks later, the jackal meets the extremist group at a secret meeting at the Kleist guesthouse in Vienna . Because he has to give up his killer job after completing the highly explosive job, he demands 500,000 (based on today's purchasing power about 4.2 million) US dollars . After his clients have reluctantly agreed, he sets several conditions. Apart from those present, no one should find out about the plan, and the top management would have to withdraw until it was carried out. The jackal also insists on absolute independence in terms of planning the attack and the timing of its execution. He also asks for a telephone number where he can keep up to date with de Gaulle's appointments and plans. He only wants to take action when half of the money has been received in his account in Switzerland .
A series of bank robberies is supposed to raise the money. The French counterintelligence can quickly bring the OAS into connection with these attacks. He also makes him suspicious that Rodin and the other two have holed up with some guards in a hotel in Rome .
In the meantime, the jackal has started planning and is collecting information from the library of the British Museum about possible public appearances of his target person. He also obtained documents about a “Paul Oliver Duggan” who died at the age of two and would now be his age to apply for a regular passport under this name. In addition, he steals the passport of the Danish teacher "Peer Lundquist" at London Airport. He chose this one because it looks very much like him. In order to be able to embody him later, he also gets hair dye in chestnut brown and also in gray, for another identity as a war veteran . After the money has entered his account, the jackal flies to Genoa as Paul Oliver Duggan .
Through observation of the hotel in Rome operated by an OAS sympathizer , the screening service under Colonel Rolland learns that only Wolenski, Rodin's personal adjutant , regularly leaves the house to bring and collect mail. Meanwhile, Denise, who has been devoted to the organization because of the death of her fiancé in the Algerian war, is assigned to approach a high - ranking official from the Élysée Palace for information.
The British police have a certain Charles Calthrop suspected of being the jackal, because the first three letters of his first and last name result in the French word for jackal: Chacal. However, a house search brings no trace.
In Genoa, the jackal visits an illegally working gunsmith in order to commission him with the construction of a special weapon based on his own designs, and then also a passport forger to have various papers made. He instructs the forger to forget everything after completing the order and to hand over all documents including negatives of the passport photos. Then he travels by train to Paris to inspect possible sites of the attack, the Arc de Triomphe , Notre Dame and the "Place of June 18". In a house that is adjacent to the latter and whose tenants are away, he gets a copy of a key to an apartment on the top floor. At the flea market he also gets clothes and some military decorations and medals that match the identity of a veteran.
The screening service kidnaps Adjutant Wolenski from Rome past the Italian authorities and takes him to Paris to interrogate him and to inquire about the OAS's activities and plans. Through the use of torture he receives individual words and a few scraps of sentences from which the terms "secret", "Kleist" and "jackal" emerge. Wolensky did not survive the torture. The crisis team formed around the French interior minister is unable to come to an arrest in complete secrecy and solely on the basis of the code name “jackal”. In order to determine the real name, the face and the identity of the jackal, Commissioner Claude Lebel is assigned to support the crisis team and to report daily. With the help of his assistant and the British secret service, Lebel succeeds in meticulous detective work in tracking down the jackal.
Denise makes contact with a French officer who is part of the crisis team in a park through a staged riding accident, becomes his lover and learns from him all the details of the meetings of the French security authorities, which she passes on to a contact man. After the jackal has obtained the forged passports, the forger tries to blackmail him and is killed by the jackal. Then he picks up his special weapon and tries it on a melon in a lonely area.
The jackal in southern France
Finally, disguised as a tourist, the jackal drives in an Alfa Romeo sports car along the Riviera towards France. When crossing the border near Ventimiglia , he notices that especially men who resemble him (hair color, height, age) are being controlled more strictly than usual. In Nice , he learned from his contact that his plan had become known through Wolenski's arrest. But he wants to continue despite the high risk and stays in a castle hotel. There he met the noble straw widow Colette de Montpellier and spent a night with her. His stay is known to the police through monitoring of hotel registrations, but when they arrive at the hotel, the jackal has already left again.
After a traffic accident, he hides in the country castle of Colette de Montpellier. After she tells him she knows that the police are looking for him, he kills her. He takes her car to escape. In order to remove all connections to his previous identity, he throws a suitcase with all the belongings that connect him to "Paul Oliver Duggan" from a bridge into a deep gorge. Finally he parks the car in Tulle , from where he continues by train, this time disguised as the Danish teacher Peer Lundquist.
Final in Paris
When the jackal arrives in Paris, the police, who are now on their heels, can barely escape. After the murder of Colette de Montpellier, the hitherto top secret search for the jackal has turned into a public murder hunt. The police already know that they now have to look for a supposed Danish citizen. Lebel has the telephones of all members of the crisis team monitored and so he can track down the leak he suspects. The member of the crisis committee, whose lover passed on the information, embarrassedly leaves the meeting room and kills himself at home. When the beloved arrives there, she is arrested.
The jackal has now found accommodation with a homosexual through contact in a Turkish bath, whom he also ruthlessly eliminates. He recognized him on the monitor of a television in a shop window, but did not notice that it was a search for a wanted man. Thanks to the private accommodation, the jackal managed to evade the tight control network of hotel reports, which means that his pursuers lose track of him again. Only now do Commissioner Lebel and the crisis team realize that the upcoming holiday for the liberation of Paris on August 25 is the day on which the jackal will most likely strike at a public appearance by de Gaulle. So Lebel has no choice but to go into the middle of the celebrations and keep an eye out for any suspicious signs. To do this, he keeps in touch with various guards. Finally, he learns from a police officer that he let a sickly and limping war veteran with crutches through the barriers after the man had shown his ID and claimed he lived here. Lebel immediately suspects that the murder weapon was hidden in the crutches and runs with the policeman to the building.
There is a showdown between Lebel and the jackal. He fired a shot at de Gaulle from an open window of the explored attic apartment, but de Gaulle escaped death because he happened to bend forward to kiss the cheek. When the jackal reloads for a second shot, Lebel and the policeman storm into the room. The jackal shoots the policeman, Lebel grabs the policeman's machine gun and shoots the jackal. It turns out that Charles Calthrop, suspected of being a jackal, is innocent. The jackal's true identity remains unclear. Lebel is the only participant in the anonymous funeral of the professional killer.
Characteristic
The film thrives on the soberly realistic staging that is carefully geared towards logic down to the smallest detail. It is kept in restrained colors and gets by with little musical background. As in Zinnemann's Western 12:00 noon , the time factor plays a decisive dramaturgical role in the course of the plot . There is constant talk of times or dates, or clocks and calendars are displayed. Towards the end of the film there is an almost 8-minute sequence without dialogue in which only murmurs in the background or music from bands marching by can be heard.
The film is set in 1962 and 1963. However, the director used car models that did not yet exist at that time, such as the Ford Capri (from 1968), VW Bus T2b (in this form from 1971), and Peugeot 504 (from 1968), Renault 12 (from 1969) and Fiat 128 (from 1969) as well as a Vespa Sprint (from 1965) at the beginning of the film. A Renault 16 (built from 1965) is shown several times . Other details also do not correspond to the early 1960s, but to the time of production. For example, women wear shoes with block heels instead of stiletto heels, which were fashionable around 1963.
production
Michael Caine had auditioned for the role of the jackal. But Zinnemann wanted an unknown actor, because in his opinion this corresponded more to the character of the killer, who should be an anonymous face in the crowd. When the film did not have the desired success in the cinemas, Zinnemann regretted his decision not to have cast a star.
The film was shot in around 70 locations in England, France, Italy and Austria, including London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Genoa and Nice. Studio recordings were made at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, England, and Studios de Boulogne in Boulogne-Billancourt , France. Some sequences could be filmed on original locations, for example in the French Ministry of the Interior or behind the police barriers during the parade on the Champs-Elysées on the national holiday.
reception
Awards
- Ralph Kemplen was nominated for an Oscar for best film editing .
- Golden Globe nominations went to Fred Zinnemann (Best Director) and Kenneth Ross (Best Screenplay) as well as the film in the Best Film / Drama category.
- Ralph Kemplen was awarded the British Film Prize for best film editing . In addition to the film itself, nominations also received Fred Zinnemann for best director, Kenneth Ross for best screenplay, Nicholas Stevenson and Bob Allen for best sound, and Michael Lonsdale and Delphine Seyrig for best supporting actor and best supporting actress.
Reviews
“Exciting film staged with great effort, cleverly mixing poetry and truth. Entertainment without deeper ambitions. "
"Fast-paced agent film [...] - fantastically filmed in numerous locations in Europe."
"Film based on a brilliant book."
" The jackal [...] devotes so much attention to the meticulous preparation of the assassin that the attention to detail already develops an enormous intensity that one can hardly believe how perfectly orchestrated Zinnemann drives the keyboard of tension to ever more dizzying heights up to the finale. "
“ The Day of the Jackal is a political thriller that gains a characteristic of the political itself from the coldness and psychological lack of contour of the title character. The figure shows in all sharpness how Zinnemann defines the political - as a sphere of human action and human interests, which is, however, operated by executioners who lack every human feeling, every human emotion. "
Others
The film had a lasting influence on the regulations of British registration and passport offices . From then on, it was no longer possible to simply look into other people's dates of birth with the associated possibility of possibly obtaining a different identity.
Remake
In 1997 Michael Caton-Jones made a very personal remake with Bruce Willis in the title role, as well as Richard Gere , Sidney Poitier and Diane Venora . Zinnemann defended himself successfully against the intention of the producer, this film called his own film The Day of the Jackal to market . The remake was eventually sold under the shortened title The Jackal . In the German-language distribution, both films still have the same film title.
literature
- Frederick Forsyth : The Jackal. Thriller (Original title: The Day of the Jackal). German by Tom Knoth . Piper, Munich and Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-492-24109-3 .
- Hans J. Wulff : The jackal. In: Thomas Koebner , Hans Jürgen Wulff (eds.): Film genres. Thriller (= RUB . No. 19145). Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019145-3 , pp. 181-186 (with references).
Web links
- The Jackal in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Jackal at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- The Jackal at Metacritic (English)
- The jackal in the online film database
- The jackal in the German dubbing index
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for The Jackal . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2010 (PDF; test number: 45 762 V).
- ↑ The Jackal (1973): Filming Locations imdb.com
- ↑ The jackal. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ (Rating: 2½ stars = above average) - Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 705.
- ↑ Short review on Critic.de
- ↑ Hans J. Wulff: The jackal. In: Thomas Koebner , Hans Jürgen Wulff (eds.): Film genres. Thriller (= RUB . No. 19145). Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019145-3 , pp. 181-186, here 184.