The Day of the Jackal (film)

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The Day of the Jackal

Film poster
Directed by Fred Zinneman
Produced by John Woolf
Julien Derode
David Deutsch
Written by Kenneth Ross
Starring Edward Fox
Michael Lonsdale
Music by Georges Delerue
Cinematography Jean Tournier
Editing by Ralph Kemplen
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) 16 May 1973
Running time 145 minutes
Country UK/France
Language English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 film set in late 1963, based on a novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth. Directed by Fred Zinnemann, it stars Edward Fox as the assassin known only as "the Jackal" who was hired to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.

The film was expensive to produce, as it was filmed on location throughout Europe. Despite being heavily promoted, being based on a successful novel, and receiving generally positive reviews, the film was a box-office failure. It did, however, make Edward Fox a star, though many speculated the film's lack of an established star (with Michael Caine having lobbied for the lead role) was the reason for its lack of success. The film is now considered a classic and it possesses one of the most nail-biting denouements.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Dissatisfied with French President Charles de Gaulle's decision to give independence to Algeria, the OAS, a militant French underground organization, decide to assassinate de Gaulle, believing they can restore the glory of France by killing him. The leader of the OAS, Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry botches the attempt, and with several other members of the plot, are caught and executed. The remaining leadership, demoralized and having fled the country to escape capture, realize they cannot finish the job they have started and have to hire a professional assassin.

After examining the dossiers of several candidates, they settle on one man, who comes to visit them. He points out that they have no choice about hiring a professional assassin: not only is their organization riddled with police informants, but their bungling has made the job more difficult because de Gaulle's security has been enhanced. He agrees to take the assignment provided they pay half his large fee in advance, and comply with several conditions. There will be no further contact between the four men, other than a telephone number in Paris he can call to get information. He will only be known by his code name: The Jackal.

The movie follows preparations the Jackal makes, including how, when and where to perform the hit (which is not disclosed), creation of fake identities and obtaining resources such as a rifle modified to look like something else, and photographs of himself as an old man. Despite being the title character, the "Jackal" talks of all the characters; we understand his motivations and his brilliance by his actions. The violence is subdued; the additional killings The Jackal performs in the process of covering his actions are brief and almost invisible, or performed off-screen.

Meanwhile, security forces discover that a rash of bank robberies are being done by the OAS. Realizing leaders of the OAS are using the robberies to finance something, Security detains their chief clerk: Adjutant Viktor Wolenski. Rather than request Wolenski's extradition from Austria, Security kidnap him in Italy and smuggle him into France.

Torturing Wolenski to death, Security extracts enough information to discover there is possibly a plot on the life of President de Gaulle by a foreign assassin whose code name may be Jackal, and if that is the case, it represents a national emergency. The Prime Minister convenes the cabinet and the head of State Police admits there is no way they can find this Jackal by normal means. They can't detain him at the border; they don't know his name. "Action Service" (the government's professional assassins) can't destroy him if he's in another country: they don't know whom to destroy. They can't arrest him if he's in the country; they don't know who he is. They can't search for him, they don't know what he looks like. Without a name or face, they can do nothing. In short, they need the best detective to discover who The Jackal is - and in secrecy - before he plunges France into a crisis.

The Police Commissioner admits there is one man, a brilliant detective working for him, who can do the job: Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel. Lebel is told to drop everything, focus on finding The Jackal and stopping him. He will have full powers and any resources he needs, subject to two requirements: no publicity, and do not fail. As in the novel, Deputy Commissioner Lebel is given a seemingly impossible assignment. Lebel's assistant Caron asks, "But no crime has been committed yet, so where are we supposed to start looking for the criminal?", to which Lebel answers, "We start by recognizing that, after de Gaulle, we are the two most powerful people in France."

As the Jackal has set up his preparations to commit the crime, Lebel also prepares to determine where The Jackal might be from, how he might perform the act and when and where he will do so. With assistance from the old boy network of police agencies in other countries, they discover a lead by looking for British subjects who have obtained passports as an adult using birth certificates of deceased children, and find a dead child, Paul Oliver Duggan, who applied for a passport decades after he had died. British MI-5, working "tap room" contacts, suspect The Jackal might be a hired assassin named Charles Calthrop, and that - while it may be coincidence - "Cha" in Charles and "Cal" in Calthrop spell the French word for Jackal.

The police search the apartment belonging to Calthrop, and recover his passport. Which brings up the question, if they have his passport, what's he traveling on? French authorities are notified of Calthrop's identity as Duggan and look for him. Lebel discovers a few hours too late that Duggan - The Jackal's false identity - has already entered the country.

The Jackal stops in a French hotel, finds an attractive married woman, Madame Montpellier, whose husband is on holiday, and carries on a fling. He discovers Madame Montpellier's room number and residential address from the hotel register. He spens that night with her on her bed. He goes to her home to see her. After a love encounter, she mentions the police had been there, asking about him, and she knows he stole his car because it has local plates, but she will protect him if he'll tell her what he's doing. He kisses and quietly strangles her. Jackal then assumes a new identity and disguise, and leaves early next morning in Madame Montpellier's car, driving to a train station, heading to Paris.

In the meantime, Lebel discovers an informant: a telephone tap exposes that a member of the cabinet has a mistress, revealing details of the investigation to her in pillow talk. Lebel admits he didn't know whose telephone to tap so he tappd them all. Several of the cabinet members are surprised and perturbed.

Having disposed of the first identity of Duggan, the Jackal is now a bespectacled schoolteacher, using a Danish passport he stole before at London airport. He travels on to Paris. Meanwhile, the police discover Madame Montpellier has been murdered, so Lebel no longer has to look for The Jackal in secrecy but make a full-publicity search. They discover the Danish Schoolteacher, Per Lunquist, got on the Paris train. They race to the station a few minutes too late to intercept The Jackal.

Lebel realizes they have only a few days to find the Jackal because he will shoot de Gaulle on Liberation Day, during a medal ceremony. Apparently dissatisfied at Lebel's presumptuousness in tapping their phones, the cabinet dismisses him with their thanks, saying they no longer need his help now that the manhunt has become public.

The Jackal knows all Parisian hotels are being watched by police. He enters a gay bathhouse, is approached by another man, who picks him up. They go to the man's apartment. Later the man sees a TV in a shop, recognizing the Jackal's face but not knowing why. As he mentions this to The Jackal, the TV in the apartment has a newsflash that Lunquist is wanted for the murder of Madame Montpellier. The Jackal kills the man off-screen in his kitchen, then switches off the TV.

The Prime Minister recalls Lebel, realizing that 100,000 police and gendarmes looking for The Jackalcan't find him and they need Lebel after all.

On Liberation Day, The Jackal, moving into his sniper position, passes a gendarme who inspects his papers. The Jackal has made himself look like an elderly amputee. The gendarme, seeing a one-legged old man on a crutch, lets him pass. The Jackal goes into an apartment, kills the landlady, unties his leg, goes into a top-floor flat, and reveals to us that his crutches had a more sinister purpose, as he disassembles the crutches, a scoped, single shot rifle is assembled, which was disguised as the crutches.

The Jackal sets up his sniper's nest and prepares to shoot de Gaulle where he will stand as he gives out medals at the ceremony. He waits. Meanwhile, Lebel is continuing to circulate, trying to figure from where The Jackal will strike. Lebel runs into the gendarme who had met the disguised Jackal, and the two of them run toward the apartment.

Meanwhile, de Gaulle is presenting medals to war veterans, and The Jackal has him in his sights. De Gaulle has stopped for a moment, and is standing. The Jackal takes the head shot.

De Gaulle presents the medal, then leans his head forward to kiss the man, per French custom. The Jackal misses the shot. As he reloads for another shot at de Gaulle, Lebel and the gendarme machine gun the door, allowing entry. The Jackal shoots and kills the gendarme. As he reloads to shoot Lebel, Lebel grabs the gendarme's machine gun, and before The Jackal can shoot him, fires a machine gun burst of bullets throwing the Jackal across the room, dead. Lebel looks out the window as the oblivious de Gaulle continues with the ceremony, unaware of how close death came to him that day.

Back in Britain, as police are looking over Calthrop's apartment, Charles Calthrop walks in and demands to know who they are and what they are doing there. So now we discover that the Charles Calthrop that they had investigated was not The Jackal.

At the end of the film, as we watch The Jackal's coffin being lowered into the grave, we are left with the question: "Who the hell was he?"

[edit] Cast and roles

[edit] Production

The movie was rather faithful to the book, with variations:

  • In the novel, the action occurs over two to three months (June through August, 1963) and there are several periods when The Jackal bides his time. The film compresses the main action into the month of August.
  • In the movie, the Jackal buys his rifle from a gunsmith and kills a blackmailing forger in Genoa, Italy; in the book those locations were Belgium. Also, he meets with the gunsmith a third time in the novel after the target practice. The ending of the gunsmith's second scene leads many viewers to believe the Jackal kills him, even though his fate is left ambiguous. (In the film's unofficial 1997 remake, The Jackal, the Jackal does kill the gunsmith, possibly leading to the confusion.)
  • In the movie the Jackal is involved in a car accident and takes the other car, although it is not explained how he manages to keep from being mauled by a savage dog in the second car-nor does it explain how he manages to move the dead driver to his own wrecked car or the fate of the dog.
  • In the novel the Jackal kills a French noblewoman when she accidentally discovers he is planning to assassinate Charles de Gaulle; in the movie she does not discover his objective, but he kills her anyway. In the novel, Lebel berates himself for not meeting with the said woman, whereas in the film he visits her at her estate.
  • In the novel a French cabinet minister who unknowingly gives secrets to a mistress/OAS agent resigns his post when his activities are exposed; in the movie he commits suicide.
  • In the movie, The Jackal immediately insinuates himself into the company of a homosexual man in Paris in order to avoid detection by staying at a hotel. In the novel, there is a delay of one or two days before he meets the man.
  • Several of the character names are changed. For instance, OAS courier Viktor Kowalksi becomes Wolenski; Jacqueline, the OAS agent who seduces the Interior Minister is re-named Denise; and Madame Montpellier's name in the novel was Madame de Chalonniere. Also, the Jackal's alias in the novel is Alexander James Quentin Duggan, as opposed to Paul Oliver Duggan.
  • In the film, Wolenski/Kowalski is kidnapped in Rome by Action Services agents; in the novel, he is lured to France to visit his daughter on the false premise that she is dying of leukemia; Wolenski/Kowalski is arrested there.
  • The OAS leaders played a much more prominent part in the novel than the film.
  • The French Ministers have remarkable and clear British accents.

Also, in a minor historical inaccuracy, Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, leader of the August 22nd, 1962 attempt on de Gaulle's life, is claimed to be the head of the OAS. Though Bastien-Thiry was indeed in charge of planning the real-life plot, he was not an official member of the organization.

Besides Michael Caine (as mentioned above), Jack Nicholson and Roger Moore were both considered for the title role.

The French government was extremely helpful in the filming of the movie, providing soldiers and use of exclusive locations for the filming of the final Liberation Day sequence. Fred Zinnemann wrote that Adrian Cayla-Legrand, the actor who played de Gaulle, was mistaken by several Parisians for the real thing during filming - though de Gaulle had been dead for two years prior to the film's release.

Some critics have seen visual and thematic similarities between the film and the John F. Kennedy assassination. These include the shot of the exploding watermelon during the Jackal's target practice, the man being carted away by an ambulance during the parade (recalling Jerry Belknap, the infamous Dealey Plaza epileptic), and the presence of a magazine with JFK's picture on the cover in the hotel scene. Also, the setting is in August 1963, three months before Kennedy's death. Save the last, these were not evident in the original novel, and were probably inserted by the director, Fred Zinnemann.

The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Film Editing.

Although the plot is set in 1962/1963, filmmakers made no efforts to avoid showing car models whose production began later, for example Peugeot 504 (built from 1968) or in the Genoa set a Fiat 128 (1969).

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