The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
DIRECTOR: John Sturges
CAST:
Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall, Jenny Agutter, Donald Pleasence, Larry Hagman, Jean Marsh, Treat Williams, Anthony Quayle, Siegfried Rauch, Joachim Hansen, Michael Byrne, Maurice Roeves, Wolf Kähler
The Eagle Has Landed is not your typical war movie. Those expecting something along the lines of Saving Private Ryan should look elsewhere. Based on a novel by espionage and international intrigue writer Jack Higgins, it details the fictional plot of a group of German paratroopers led by the veteran Colonel Kurt Steiner (Michael Caine) to kidnap or kill Winston Churchill and force the Allies to negotiate a peace settlement. To this end, Steiner and the mastermind of the top-secret assignment, Colonel Max Radl (nicely played by Robert Duvall) enlist the aid of an Irish Republican Army fighter named Liam Devlin (Donald Sutherland), and a British collaborator, Joanna Grey (a typically frosty Jean Marsh). The mission is pushed in a hush-hush fashion by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler (a perfectly cast Donald Pleasence), who intends it as a birthday present for Hitler. Steiner and his men are taught Polish and given Polish uniforms, intending to infiltrate the small English town where Joanna Grey has informed Himmler and German Intelligence Chief Admiral Canaris (Anthony Quayle) that Churchill will be spending a weekend on vacation. They are to pose as Polish soldiers until Churchill’s arrival, and then abduct or assassinate him.
Of course, since this team of secret agents are the main characters of the film, steps must be taken to make them reasonably sympathetic to the audience. We learn that Devlin left the IRA after it began targeting women and children, and that Steiner has a choice between this risky mission or court-martial for trying to help a Jewish woman escape during the razing of the Warsaw Ghetto. He and his men are portrayed as pure soldiers without politics. Admiral Canaris, a historical figure, is accurately portrayed as anti-Nazi, complaining bitterly about Hitler and his hiearchy to his fictional subordinate Radl. (Canaris was eventually arrested and executed for his involvement in several plots against Hitler.) Radl is a more subtle and controlled man, who carries out his orders without complaint and keeps his real opinions to himself, though we suspect his true sympathies lie more with the Fatherland and the common German soldier than with the Führer or Nazism. Certainly both the book and the movie deserve credit for going out of their way to point out the distinction between the true Nazis and the apolitical military men in the German Armed Forces.
The Eagle Has Landed, while somewhat based in reality and not without its moments of seriousness, is best described as escapist entertainment, and as such it is reasonably successful. It is not really intended as a dark, serious meditation on the futility of war, although it does occasionally try to make that point. It is meant as entertainment, and while it starts a little slowly and hits a few too many other dull spots throughout, it often provides plenty of entertainment. The biggest handicap by far is the dull romance between Devlin and a young girl he meets in the village (Jenny Agutter), which almost brings the movie to a halt. Things pick up well when a local American unit catches on to the situation, especially a hilarious Larry Hagman as an ambitious but bumbling officer, by far the movie’s most entertaining character, and Treat Williams in a more serious but pretty decent performance as his more sensible subordinate.
The acting, like the movie overall, is a mixed bag. Michael Caine, who makes no effort to disguise his British accent, is a little hard to take as a German, but he gives a fine portrayal of a tough but fair military man and an honorable officer whose only loyalty is to his men, not to Hitler or Nazism. Donald Sutherland is passable as the roguish Devlin, but I think someone else might have been better-suited to the role. With her icy demeanor, Jean Marsh is more effective as Joanna Grey, and Robert Duvall is actually very good as the stoic and dignified Colonel Radl, sporting a surprisingly believable German accent. The most impressive of the supporting characters, however, is the always eerie Donald Pleasence, in a perfect casting choice as Heinrich Himmler. Besides looking by far the most like him of anyone I have seen in the role, Pleasence plays him low-key and restrained, basically a dorky glorified pencil-pusher with a quirky and almost shy sense of humor, and an underlying sense that there is something just a little off-kilter about this man, a subtle feeling of something more sinister lurking behind his placid face. From all I have read of Himmler, Pleasence’s behavior is extremely accurate. He, Duvall, and Hagman’s comic relief are in my opinion the best things about the movie, but at times I can’t help thinking that Duvall and Pleasence at least belong in a better one. Siegfried Rauch and Michael Byrne are credible as faithful subordinates to Steiner and Radl, and Joachim Hansen is more menacing in his cameo as SS General Stroop, crusher of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, than Jon Voight was in his much larger role as Stroop in the Uprising miniseries, and his argument with Steiner over the treatment of the Jews briefly reminds the audience of the more serious events taking place in the background. Maurice Roeves, who played Rudolf Hess in Inside the Third Reich and the British Colonel Munro in The Last of the Mohicans, has a small role as a British officer, and Wolf Kähler appears briefly as an SS officer.
The Eagle Has Landed is no war masterpiece, nor does it claim to be, it is a fun, quirky little movie, often both corny and entertaining, and if that description appeals to you, then I would suggest checking it out.
