The Day of the Jackal

Description

Product Description Based on Frederick Forsyth's best-selling novel of political intrigue, The Day of the Jackal, tells of a cold, suave British assassin hired by the French OAS to kill General Charles de Gaulle. Nameless and faceless, the killer, known by the code name of Jackal (Edward Fox), relentlessly moves toward the date with death that would rock the world. The tension mounts as the methodical preparations of the Jackal are paralleled with the efforts of the police to uncover the plot, which gives the story non-stop, edge-of-your-seat suspense.Bonus Content:Production NotesCast and FilmmakersTheatrical Trailer desertcart.com With its high-intensity plot about an attempt to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, the bestselling novel by Frederick Forsyth was a prime candidate for screen adaptation. Director Fred Zinnemann brought his veteran skills to bear on what has become a timeless classic of screen suspense. Not to be confused with the later remake The Jackal starring Bruce Willis (which shamelessly embraced all the bombast that Zinnemann so wisely avoided), this 1973 thriller opts for lethal elegance and low-key tenacity in the form of the Jackal, the suave assassin played with consummate British coolness by Edward Fox. He's a killer of the highest order, a master of disguise and international elusiveness, and this riveting film follows his path to de Gaulle with an intense, straightforward documentary style. Perhaps one of the last great films from a bygone age of pure, down-to-basics suspense (and a kind of debonair European alternative to the American grittiness of The French Connection), The Day of the Jackal is a cat-and-mouse thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat until its brilliantly executed final scene (pardon the pun), by which time Fox has achieved cinematic immortality as one of the screen's most memorable killers. --Jeff Shannon Review: Brings back recent French history - I really enjoyed watching this movie. It was filmed mostly in France, and as a result there are wonderful glimpses of the France of 1972, especially Paris. So I got to see how French citizens of that time dressed, and got about, and the hotels and storefronts and home interiors that they had. How interesting! There was only one shot for a few seconds of what looked like a subway entrance in Paris, and I was hoping to see an example of Hector Guimard's Metro entrances. Having never gone to France, I was most impressed by the government offices used by the various French officials in the film. It appears that individual offices only had task lighting on the desks; there was no overhead lighting for the entire room. The ministerial meeting rooms were exceptions, of course, and indeed very elegant. I was amazed at the amount of cigarette smoking I saw the actors doing. I know that was very common in the 1960s, but it surprises me still. I have read Forsyth's book of the same name: several times, in fact. Both book and this film do have one major logical gaffe: they portray the Jackal assembling his specially built rifle for the first time, with no prompting from the gunsmith at all in the film, and only one sentence in the book. How could the Jackal have known the exact assembly steps for the rifle in advance, without seeing any part of the weapon until that moment? That is a flaw in both the movie and book. One would also think that as a good technician, the Jackal would do a few days of training with the rifle, working on several paper or watermelon targets, to be sure he mastered the weapon. In the film, he fires less than 10 shots, and is done. Edward Fox does a really great job of portraying the Jackal. As in the book, the Jackal pushes ahead ruthlessly even when he learns the assassination plot is known. What is not made clear in the movie is that if he gives up the hunt (as the ministers speculate), he will have to return most of the money he was paid by the OAS. Also, with French authorities alerted, it would be very difficult for him to leave France without the risk of detection and arrest. Perhaps the Jackal we see at the classic fork in the road, with the left fork pointing to Paris, and the right fork to Italy, was thinking of these things. He takes a deep breath and turns left. To paraphrase the book, the Jackal thought he could beat the security screen. Evidently, he must have had some plan for getting himself out of France after completing the hit. We, the viewers (and readers of the book) will never know what that plan was. We must assume that so clever a person had an escape plan that he felt would work. My favorite character in the movie is the Minister of the Interior. He was tasked with mobilizing the various French government agencies and French security forces to identify, locate, and stop the Jackal, and in the movie, he does so calmly and logically. He understands the need to delegate responsibilities to the other ministries and to Claude Lebel, the detective assigned to actually identify and locate the Jackal. In the movie he does not smoke or yell at anyone, and remains calm even with the massive stress. My second favorite character in the book is Denise, the woman who gets in a relationship with one of the ministers and keeps the agent Valmy well informed of what Lebel is doing and what action the various ministries are taking against the Jackal. Perhaps in her eyes it was not the Jackal or the OAS she was supporting. Instead, she was fighting a battle for her much loved boyfriend, a French soldier who was killed in Algeria. Through the minister she was extracting information from, she knew what the Jackal had been hired for. I guess she wanted de Gaulle to pay for the death of her boyfriend. I think what Denise did was wrong, completely so, but I can also understand her reasons for doing it. She had lost the man she loved. My third favorite character in the movie is Claude Lebel's wife. She made me laugh in each of her two appearances in the film. "Claude! The minister wants to see you!" and then she opens the curtains and grabs his foot to try and wake him up from a deep sleep. I did not like the scenes involving torture being used by French officials on Waldoski, and evidently it sickened the team of men who were trying to transcribe the audio take of his confession, too. One odd thing about the movie was the use of German motorcycles by French police officials. You would think that France, after being invaded so horribly by the Nazis during World War II, would not buy German products for official government purposes. But in the movie you see motorcycle messengers zooming off -- mounted on BMW motorcycles. Strange, that. Perhaps there were no reliable French-built motorcycles at that time. Overall this is a very interesting movie, showing the France of 1972. Review: Chacal… - I read Frederick Forsyth’s fast-paced political thriller in the 1970’s. I’ve been through La Place de Rennes many times subsequently and have frequently looked up at the open windows in the building surrounding La Place… and have thought about the professional assassin who might be still lurking, waiting for the perfect shot. Of course, there never was a professional assassin there in the first place. Forsyth’s book is almost entirely fictional but based on very real political forces at the time. The book was published in 1971. This movie, directed by Fred Zinneman, largely very faithful to the book, was released in 1973. This was my first viewing. The movie replicates the fast-pace. The two plus hours flew by. Algeria was an integral part of France. The war in Algeria, commencing in 1954, almost tore the country apart. At one time tanks surrounded government buildings in Paris, to deter French paratroopers from staging a coup. De Gaulle went to Algiers and famously proclaimed: “Je vous ai compris.” (I understood you). Within four years over a million pieds noirs poured in metropolitan France, many bitter at their loss of the homes and homeland. That bitterness was given political expression by the creation of the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète), a right-wing paramilitary outfit who felt betrayed by what that perceived as de Gaulle’s volte-face on Algeria. And they sought to kill him. The early part of the movie is based on very real events. Somehow de Gaulle survived, unscathed, a well-organized assassination attempt in Paris led by Col. Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry. Interestingly, though not in the movie, the code name for the attempt was “Operation Charlotte Corday.” In the movie, as in real life, Bastien-Thiry would be executed by firing squad, the last person in French history to have acquired this distinction. (In the movie he makes a confident statement in his jail cell that no French soldier would shoot him). The OAS goes deep underground, and abroad, to Austria and Italy. Their organization is riddled with informers, so they decide to hire an outsider to kill de Gaulle. Edward Fox brilliantly plays “the Jackal,” a code-name which (may, or may not, as the movie subsequently reveals) be based on the first three letters of his first and last name: “cha” & “cal”, which is the French word for Jackal. For Algeria “aficionados,” as I have a certain weakness to be, the role of the actor Jean Martin is ironic. In the movie “The Battle of Algiers,” he plays Colonel Mathieu, the ram-rod straight colonel who leads the 10th Paras into Algiers and breaks the back of the FLN there. He uses torture to accomplish this objective. In the “Day of the Jackal” he plays an OAS operative, Wolinski. He is captured by French authorities who decide to use torture to break the OAS, and do so, as depicted by some graphic scenes in the movie. He is reminded that: “they always talk in the end.” The heart of the movie is the fast-moving battle of wits between the truly psychopathic killer, the Jackal, who, even though he realizes many of his covers have been blown, continues on, and the French super-detective, Lebel, also brilliantly played by Michael Lonsdale. The ultimate point of convergence is the aforementioned Place de Rennes. At one point in the movie I wanted to scream about the sorrow of human existence. The Jackal meets a very attractive woman, Colette, played by Delphine Seyrig. Why not just forget the whole thing, and stay with her? Yet all too many humans are simply not wired that way. Alas. As for “political thrillers,” this one was very well-done, and touched some familiar chords: 5-stars.