THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: Brian G. Hutton
SCREENWRITER: Alistair Maclean
FILM STARS: Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure, Patrick Wymark, Michael Hordern, Donald Houston, Peter Barkworth, William Squire, Robert Beatty, Ingrid Pitt, Brook Williams, Neil McCarthy, Vincent Ball, Anton Diffring, Ferdy Mayne, Derren Nesbitt
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Alistair Maclean
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Fawcett Crest
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1969
COUNTRY: USA
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1967
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES GENRE: War
WORDS: Where Eagles Dare, the book and the film are both old fashioned World War 2 action-adventure yarns.
This film is a throwback to the action war films of the 1950s.
By the late 60s war films had to be either historical, character driven and sombre, or antiwar. Perhaps it was the “realities” of the 1960s (Vietnam war, civil unrest, socio-cultural domestic issues) that that made flights of fancy unattractive but there was always a market for action for actions sake, especially if done well.
Perhaps the success of the man on the similar man on a mission film with no messages The Dirty Dozen (1967), was the inspiration for this production, but unlike Dirty Dozen, which is quite modern (1960s modern) in its outlook, Where Eagles Dare is decidedly old fashioned.
Regardless, the film is made well. This is big budget stuff with many big action sequences and stunts and a screenplay that links all the big action sequences with drama and characters happy to emote within the confines of the narrative.
Producer Elliott Kastner approached Alistair MacLean to write a screenplay for a war film “filled with mystery, suspense, and action”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Eagles_Dare
He did, and then he turned it into a novel. So, it’s not quite a novelisation though it does read like one a little. MacLean writes wholly entertaining novels with well detailed heroes (less well detailed bad guys), usually on a mission, with lots of action with a smidge off mystery (usually in the form of a traitor) thrown in. It’s a formula that he likes (Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone, Ice Station Zebra etc) but one which he manages to make entertaining. Familiar but entertaining and not graphic.
This film is, however, a little more graphic than normal for Maclean. Here, between script (and novel) and film, the biggest difference is tone. The book is more boy’s own adventure with humour. The film is more serious, not sombre, but serious with a lot more violence. Perhaps that is its concession to the 1960s.
Director Brian G. Hutton started out as a none too successful actor in the 1950s though he had some notable small roles – in King Creole (1958) with Elvis, and in Last Train from Gun Hill (1959) as well as the lead in the Roger Corman directed crime quickie Carnival Rock (1957). He turned to directing in the mid-1960s with the intriguing coming of age road film Wild Seed (1965) and was never prolific but, I think, is very underrated. He was 33 when he directed Where Eagle’s Dare and his youth perhaps bring a youthful enthusiasm to the going-ons. All his films have something added to their edges that make whatever mood they are trying to convey heightened, so they stand out from others in their genre groups. The magnificent Kelly’s Heroes (1970) is more anti-authoritarian and chaotic than you would expect, Night Watch (1973) more thriller-ish, X, Y and Zee (1972) more dramatically hysterical, The First Deadly Sin (1980) more sombre and world weary, High Road to China (1983) more robustly a romantic adventure. All his films are worth watching.
Burton is the big star and he plays a straight hero, which is odd for Burton, especially in the 1960s. Burton later said, “I decided to do the picture because Elizabeth’s (Taylor) two sons said they were fed up with me making films they weren’t allowed to see, or in which I get killed. They wanted me to kill a few people instead”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Eagles_Dare
He is wonderful as always. And, to use the old cliché, I could listen to him read the phone book. Eastwood, likewise, is great. He, apparently, was happy for most of his dialogue to go to Burton making him the silent man of action which would evoke the silent “man with no name” action roles which had brought him success in his Italian westerns. The role here, though, was a transition being positioned, both chronologically and in persona, between the silent “man with no name” and the quiet man, but with asides and one liners, that became Dirty Harry. He holds his own against Burton.
The rest of the cast is populated by actors from the Isles, playing allies and Germans with Derren Nesbitt particularly good as the hissable Nazi.
The book is a fun read, and short (unlike the brick sized thrillers we seem to get nowadays) and the film is a lot of fun with location shooting (in Austria) and a rousing musical score (by Ron Goodwin) that help a lot. See it the biggest screen you can get your hands on.
Where Eagles Dare was a huge success at the time – it was the seventh-most popular film at the UK box office in 1969, and 13th in the US.
LINKS
TRAILER
It’s a very good movie, although the plot is preposterous. Burton is very good, it’s a great shame the drink damaged him and caused his early death. As usual with MacLean, the Germans are reduced to caricatures from a bad 1940s film.
I agree the film is a bit of an anachronism. By 1968 the conventional big budget ww2 movies were out of fashion, but not completely dead. In the 70s you had The Battle of Britain, A Bridge Too Far and Midway, but the trend was for smaller scale movies with an anti war theme.
Off the top of my head I can’t recall Eastwood doing another WW2 movie apart from Kelly’s Heroes( a great movie on a number of different levels, you should write a post about it) . A shame, he would have been good in the right film.