RAMNATH N PAI RAIKAR | NT NETWORK
Films based on novels resonating political themes have their own followers. Films in this genre such as ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ (1962), ‘Z’ (1969), ‘All the President’s Men’ (1976) and ‘The Ghost Writer’ (2010), among others have effectively translated the novels on which they are based, onto the screen. Frederick Forsyth, an English writer, has written a number of novels based on political themes like ‘The Day of the Jackal’, ‘The Odessa File’ and ‘The Fourth Protocol’, all of which have been made into films of the same name.
‘The Day of the Jackal’ is in fact a very good political thriller, and it is often said that this is one of the best book-to-film conversion; a rare case of a film far surpassing the source material on which it was based. Adapting Forsyth’s hugely popular international bestseller to the screen was no simple task. Knowing audiences would be very familiar with the story, director, Fred Zinnemann and screenwriter, Kenneth Ross followed the book faithfully. However, where Forsyth had to describe the details of a fictional assassination attempt on President of France, Charles de Gaulle in an excessively verbose novel, Zinnemann was able to take viewers through the intricate plot by means of the efficient visual narrative conventions of film, using very little dialogue. The opening five minutes of the film are a marvel. Almost completely devoid of dialogue, the scenes portray visually more story than most modern thrillers can fit into two hours. To achieve this effect, Zinnemann employed a semi-documentary style that Hollywood directors had followed in previous pictures such as ‘House on 92nd Street’ (1945), ‘The Naked City’ (1948) and ‘Operation Manhunt’ (1954).
The film – the first major Anglo-French co-production – was originally part of a two-picture deal between producer, John Woolf and Zinnemann, the other being an adaptation of the play ‘Abelard and Heloise’ by Ronald Millar.
The producer employed top-notch actors from UK and France in the film, who were not yet well known, especially in America, thus heightening the semi-documentary approach and keeping the focus on the mechanics of the plot rather than tipping the balance toward star turns.
Actor Edward Fox was cast in the title role as Zinnemann was impressed with his performance in the 1971 film, ‘The Go-Between’. Fox fitted the concept of Zinnemann for the character; the director wanting a relative unknown actor to play ‘The Jackal’, someone young, clean-cut, deceptively cheerful and friendly. The English stage actor, Alan Badel was cast as the French Interior Minister overseeing the efforts to stop De Gaulle’s assassination. Actress, Delphine Seyrig, who plays the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier was one of the most successful and famous stars in France, while actress, Olga Georges-Picot, the conspirators’ mole in the French government, later went to star in Woody Allen’s ‘Love and Death’ (1975).
Composer, Georges Delerue, who wrote the original music for Zinnemann’s earlier film, ‘A Man for All Seasons’ (1966) and later for his ‘Julia’ (1977), was signed for ‘The Day of the Jackal’. His pounding score, right from the opening frames, rivets audiences’ attention. His score gives way to diegetic soundscape, with music provided by radios, street performers and marching bands. In fact, the climax plays with “La Marseillaise” juxtaposed against police efforts to foil the assassination.
‘The Day of the Jackal’ was filmed on location in France, Britain, Italy and Austria. Zinnemann was able to film in locations usually restricted to filmmakers, such as inside the French Ministry of the Interior, largely due to French producer, Julien Derode’s skill in dealing with authorities. During the massive annual 14 July parade down the Champs-Élysées, the crew was allowed to film inside the police lines, capturing extraordinary close-up footage of the massing of troops, tanks, and artillery during the French Liberation Day.
Interestingly, Zinnemann wrote that Adrien Cayla-Legrand, the actor who played de Gaulle, was mistaken by several Parisians for the real thing during filming, although de Gaulle had been dead for two years prior to the film’s release. The sequence was filmed during a real parade, leading to confusion; the people in the crowd, many of whom were unaware that a film was being shot, mistook the actors portraying police officers for real officers, and many tried to help them arrest the “suspects” they were apprehending in the crowd.
The Parisian train station Gare Montparnasse, which had been razed since the film’s 1963 setting, was recreated in the Studios de Boulogne in Paris.
When released, the film received positive reviews. The film grossed $16,056,255 at the box office, earning North American rentals of $8,525,000. Zinnemann was pleased with the film’s reception at the Box Office, telling an interviewer in 1993, “The idea that excited me was to make a suspense film where everybody knew the end that de Gaulle was not killed. In spite of knowing the end, would the audience sit still? And it turned out that they did, just as the readers of the book did.”
A film titled, ‘The Jackal’ directed by Michael Caton-Jones, was released in 1997. The film, loosely based on the plot of the novel by Forsyth, featured an unnamed assassin (Bruce Willis) being hired to kill the First Lady of the United States by the Russian mafia. Both Zinnemann and Forsyth unsuccessfully lobbied to have the film’s name changed to disassociate it from the original novel.
TRIVIA
The method for acquiring a false identity and UK passport detailed in the novel, ‘The Day of the Jackal’ is often referred to as the “Day of the Jackal fraud” and remained a well-known security loophole in the UK until 2007. The would-be assassin Vladimir Arutinian, who attempted to kill US President, George W Bush during his 2005 visit to the Republic of Georgia, was an obsessive reader of the particular novel and kept an annotated version of it during his planning for the assassination. A copy of the Hebrew translation to ‘The Day of the Jackal’ was found in possession of Yigal Amir, the Israeli who in 1995 assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel.
There are 31 individual insert shots of clocks in ‘The Day of the Jackal’. By contrast, ‘High Noon’ (1952) also directed by Fred Zinnemann and more directly concerned with the passage of time, contains only 13 insert shots of clocks.
For the Jackal’s last disguise as one-legged veteran, Edward Fox had to have his leg bent back and strapped to his body. Because this was so painful and cut off all circulation, the doctor for the crew would not allow the actor to do this for more than five minutes at a time.
The special light weight, concealable rifle the Jackal gets made for the assassination was an actual working weapon constructed by a master British gunsmith. Two rifles were made; one now resides in the Paris Cinematheque and the other was turned over to British authorities as agreed.
Although the story of ‘The Day of the Jackal’ takes place in 1962 and 1963, the filmmakers made no efforts to avoid showing car models whose production began later, for example Peugeot 504 (built from 1968 onwards), Renault 12 as well as Fiat 128 (built from 1969 onwards), and an orange Volkswagen Bus, circa 1973.
The Malayalam film, ‘August 1’ (1988) directed by Sibi Malayil and starring Mammootty is loosely based on the novel, ‘The Day of the Jackal’.
plot
On August 22, 1962, an assassination attempt is made on the President of France General Charles de Gaulle (Adrien Cayla-Legrand) by the militant French underground organisation OAS, for granting independence to Algeria. However, the entire entourage of the President escapes without injury, following machine-gun fire. Within six months, the OAS leader, Jean Bastien-Thiry (Jean Sorel) and other members are captured, and Bastien-Thiry is executed.
The remaining OAS leaders, now exiled in Vienna, decide to make another attempt, and hire a professional British assassin (Edward Fox) with the code name ‘Jackal’. They order several bank robberies to pay his fee: $500,000. The Jackal travels to Genoa and commissions a custom-made rifle and fake identity papers. He kills the forger when the man tries to blackmail him. In Paris, he sneaks an impression of the key to a flat that overlooks the Place du 18 Juin 1940.
In Rome, where the OAS team has moved, members of the French Action Service kidnap the OAS’s chief clerk, Viktor Wolenski (Jean Martin). Wolenski dies under interrogation, but not before revealing some information to the agents, including the word ‘Jackal’. The French Interior Minister (Alan Badel) convenes a secret cabinet meeting of the heads of the French security forces. When asked to provide his best detective, the Police Commissioner Berthier (Timothy West) recommends his deputy, Claude Lebel (Michel Lonsdale). Soon Lebel is given special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, which is complicated by de Gaulle’s refusal to change his planned public appearances.
Colonel St Clair (Barrie Ingham), a personal aide to the President and one of the cabinet members discloses what the government knows to his new mistress, Denise (Olga Georges-Picot), who passes this information on to her OAS contact. Meanwhile, Lebel determines that British suspect Charles Calthrop may be travelling under the name Paul Oliver Duggan, who died as a child, and has entered France.
Although he is told the authorities know about the plot, the Jackal carries on. He seduces the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier (Delphine Seyrig), and discovering that the police have talked to her, strangles her. He then assumes the identity of a bespectacled Danish schoolteacher and drives to the railway station to catch a train for Paris. After the discovery of Montpellier’s body and recovery of her car at the railway station, Lebel initiates an open manhunt.
At a meeting with the Interior Minister’s cabinet, Lebel predicts that the Jackal will attempt to shoot de Gaulle three days later on Liberation Day, during a ceremony honouring members of the French Resistance. Lebel also plays a recording of a phone call, in which St Clair’s mistress, Denise gives information to her OAS contact. St Clair leaves the meeting. Denise returns to St Clair’s apartment to find that he has killed himself and the police waiting for her.
On Liberation Day, the Jackal, disguised as an elderly veteran amputee, enters the building he had chosen earlier, assembles his rifle, and waits for the moment. When Lebel finds out a man has passed through the cordon, he races to the building. As de Gaulle presents the first medal, the Jackal shoots, but misses when the tall president suddenly leans down to kiss the recipient on the cheek. Lebel and a policeman burst in and kill the Jackal. The Jackal, never fully identified, is buried in an unmarked grave.
While searching his flat, police are confronted by Charles Calthrop, who insists on accompanying them to Scotland Yard. He is later cleared, leading to the film’s final line: “but if the Jackal wasn’t Calthrop, then who the hell was he?”