The Eagle Has Landed (film)


The Eagle Has Landed is a 1976 British war film directed by John Sturges, and starring Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall.
Based on the 1975 novel The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins, the film is about a fictional German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill in the middle of the Second World War. The Eagle Has Landed was Sturges's final film, and was successful upon its release.

Plot

Following the successful rescue of Mussolini from imprisonment in Italy, German intelligence officer Max Radl is ordered to study the feasibility of capturing Winston Churchill in a similar raid. Radl learns that Churchill is due to visit the quiet Norfolk village of Studley Constable, which happens to contain a Nazi sleeper agent, Joanna Grey. He proposes that Luftwaffe colonel Kurt Steiner lead a platoon of Fallschirmjäger into the village, and recruits IRA man Liam Devlin to contact Grey and make preparations for their arrival. He finds Steiner and his men in a penal unit on German-occupied Alderney, for trying to help a Jewish girl escape the SS, and convinces them to accept the mission.
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 imprison the inhabitants 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. Junior officer Captain 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. The book came out in 1975 and was a bestseller, 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.

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.
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. Jean Marsh's role was originally offered to Deborah Kerr, who turned it down.

Filming

Filming took place in 1976 over sixteen weeks. 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.
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. Jack Wiener later told me 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."
Cornwall was used to represent the Channel Islands, and Berkshire for East Anglia. 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. A fake water wheel was added to the 15th-century structure for the film. 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 from Newquay.
The sequence set in Alderney was filmed in Charlestown, near St Austell in Cornwall. 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. The parachuting scenes were carried out by members of the REME 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". ITC made two more films with the same production team, Escape to Athena and Green Ice. The Eagle Has Landed spent a week as the number one film in the United Kingdom and was the fifteenth-most successful film of 1977.
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." Canby singled out the writing and directing for praise:
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.

Home media

While US and UK VHS cassettes had the 123-minute US cut, most DVDs and Blu-rays available worldwide feature the original UK theatrical cut, which in DVD region 2 and 4 countries runs 130 minutes at 25fps. There are two exceptions:
  • The first US DVD, from Artisan Entertainment, had some missing scenes reinstated for a runtime of 131 minutes. It has been superseded by a Shout! Factory Blu-ray/DVD dual format set, containing the UK theatrical cut and various extras.
  • In 2004 Carlton Visual Entertainment in the UK released a two-disc Special Edition PAL DVD version, which contains various extras and two versions of the film: the UK theatrical version and a newly restored, extended 145-minute version, equivalent to 151 minutes at 24fps. Although the packaging claims otherwise, both versions have a 2.0 stereo surround soundtrack.
The extended version contains a number of scenes that were deleted even before the European cinema release:
  • Alternative opening: originally, the film was intended to start with Heinrich Himmler arriving at Schloss Hohenschwangau for a conference with Hitler, Canaris, Martin Bormann and Joseph Goebbels. It precedes the scenes under the opening credits which are a long aerial shot of a staff car leaving the castle in question. The deleted scene explains why Schloss Hohenschwangau appears in the credits but not in the film.
  • Extended scene in which Radl arrives at Abwehr headquarters; he discusses his health with a German Army doctor, played by Ferdy Mayne.
  • Scene at the Berlin University where Liam Devlin is a lecturer.
  • Scene in Landsvoort where Steiner and von Neustadt discuss the mission, its merits, and consequences.
  • Extended scene of Devlin's arrival at Studley Constable in which he and Joanna Grey discuss their part in the mission.
  • Scene of Devlin driving his motorbike through the centre of the village and on to the cottage, where he inspects the barn before returning to the village.
  • Scene in which Devlin reads poetry to Molly Prior.
  • Extended scene in which Molly interrupts Devlin shortly after he receives the army vehicles.
  • Scene on the boat at the end of the film showing the fate of von Neustadt; the scene is also featured in the Special Edition DVD stills gallery.