Plot
Inspired by the successful rescue of Benito Mussolini from enemy forces, German Admiral Canaris is ordered to study the feasibility of capturing Winston Churchill. Canaris delegates the task to Oberst Max Radl, who discovers that Churchill is due to visit a small village on the coast of Norfolk – a village that coincidentally contains a Nazi sleeper agent, Joanna Grey. Radl proposes that Luftwaffe colonel Kurt Steiner lead a platoon of Fallschirmjäger into the village (named Studley Constable), and enlists IRA man Liam Devlin to contact Grey and make preparations for their arrival. Radl finds Steiner and his men in a penal unit on German-occupied Alderney, for trying to help a young Jewish girl escape from the SS, and convinces them to accept the mission (codenamed Operation Eagle).
Heinrich Himmler summons Radl and presents him with a letter authorizing Operation Eagle, apparently signed by Adolf Hitler. The Germans fly to England in a captured RAF plane and drop into Norfolk dressed as Polish paratroopers. With the mission under way, Himmler retrieves the letter from Radl and destroys it, revealing that it was launched without Hitler's knowledge.
The inhabitants of Studley Constable initially fall for the Germans' Polish disguises, but the ruse is exposed when one of the men jumps into a mill race to save a drowning girl, causing the Nazi uniform under his clothes to become visible. The Germans lock the village down and hold the inhabitants captive in the church. The priest's sister escapes, however, and alerts a nearby unit of United States Army Rangers.
Colonel Pitts, the Rangers' commander, launches a costly assault on the village that ends in his own death at the hands of Joanna Grey (who in turn is killed by Pitts' first sergeant). Captain Harry Clark then launches a better orchestrated assault, trapping the Germans in the church. The men sacrifice themselves to give Devlin, Steiner, and his wounded second-in-command time to slip through a hidden passage. A local girl, Molly Prior, who has fallen for the charming Devlin, helps them escape. Steiner orders his second-in-command to board a German torpedo boat anchored in a nearby creek, and heads for the manor where Churchill is staying. Meanwhile, Radl is arrested on Alderney for exceeding his authority, and executed by firing squad.
Steiner shoots his target dead on the terrace of the manor house, and is killed immediately after. The victim is revealed to be a body double, however, the real Churchill having gone to Persia for the Tehran Conference. In the meantime, the torpedo boat runs aground before it can reach the North Sea. Only Devlin escapes death or capture, leaving a love letter for Molly before slipping away.
Production
Development
In October 1974, Paramount announced they had purchased the film rights to Jack Higgins' The Eagle Has Landed in partnership with Jack Wiener, formerly an executive at Paramount. [3] The book came out in 1975 and was a bestseller, [4] but the author had doubted whether anyone would be interested in making a film of the novel because its protagonists were German soldiers. He was amazed that the rights were not only sold within a fortnight but that the film was brought to production so swiftly. [5]
Casting
Michael Caine was originally offered the part of Devlin but did not want to play a member of the IRA, so asked if he could have the role of Steiner. Richard Harris was in line to play Devlin, but ongoing comments he had made in support of the IRA and attendance at an IRA fundraising event in America embroiled him in scandal and drew threats to the film's producers, so he was removed from the production and Donald Sutherland was given the role instead. [1] [6]
In March 1976, The New York Times announced that David Bowie would play a German Nazi in the film if his schedule could be worked out. [7] Jean Marsh's role was originally offered to Deborah Kerr, who turned it down. [8]
Filming
Filming took place in 1976 over sixteen weeks. [9] Tom Mankiewicz thought the script was the best he had ever written but felt "John Sturges, for some reason, had given up" and did a poor job, and that editor Anne V. Coates was the one who saved the movie and made it watchable. [10]
Michael Caine had initially been excited at the prospect of working with Sturges. During shooting, Sturges told Caine that he only worked to earn enough money to go fishing. Caine wrote later in his autobiography: "The moment the picture finished he took the money and went. [Producer] Jack Wiener later told me [Sturges] never came back for the editing nor for any of the other good post-production sessions that are where a director does some of his most important work. The picture wasn't bad, but I still get angry when I think of what it could have been with the right director. We had committed the old European sin of being impressed by someone just because he came from Hollywood." [11]
Cornwall was used to represent the Channel Islands, and Berkshire for East Anglia. [12] The majority of the film, set in the fictional village of Studley Constable, was filmed at Mapledurham on the A4074 in Oxfordshire and features the village church, as well as Mapledurham Watermill and Mapledurham House, used for a manor house where Winston Churchill is taken. [12] A fake water wheel was added to the 15th-century structure for the film. [12] Mock buildings such as shops and a pub were constructed on site in Mapledurham while interiors were filmed at Twickenham Studios. The "Landsvoort Airfield" scenes were filmed at RAF St Mawgan, five miles (8 km) from Newquay. [12]
The sequence set in Alderney was filmed in Charlestown, near St Austell in Cornwall. [12] Some of the filming took place at Rock in Cornwall. The railway station sequence where Steiner and his men make their first appearance was filmed in Rovaniemi, Finland. [12] The parachuting scenes were carried out by members of the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) Parachute Display Team on Wednesday 28 April 1976. The exit shots were filmed from a DC-3 at Dunkeswell Airfield in Devon. The landings onto the beach were filmed on Holkham Beach in Norfolk.
Reception
The film was a success, with Lew Grade saying "it made quite a lot of money". [13] ITC made two more films with the same production team, Escape to Athena and Green Ice . [14] The Eagle Has Landed spent a week as the number one film in the United Kingdom (9 April 1977) and was the fifteenth-most successful film of 1977. [15]
In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby called the film "a good old-fashioned adventure movie that is so stuffed with robust incidents and characters that you can relax and enjoy it without worrying whether it actually happened or even whether it's plausible." [2] Canby singled out the writing and directing for praise:
Tom Mankiewicz's screenplay, based on a novel by Jack Higgins, is straightforward and efficient and even intentionally funny from time to time. Mr. Sturges ... obtains first-rate performances building the tension until the film's climactic sequence, which, as you might suspect, concludes with a plot twist. ... With so many failed suspense melodramas turning up these days, it's refreshing to see one made by people who know what they're about. [2]
When another ITC production, March or Die , faltered in US theatres during initial engagements in the fall of 1977, Columbia Pictures repackaged it into a double-feature combo with Eagle for its remaining playdates.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71%, based on reviews from 14 critics. [16] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. [17]
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