There looks to be something promising about World War II films and children use to read about military heroes in Victor comic books of the bygone era. With movies featuring WWII epics going back to the 1940s (even when the war was still ongoing), the late 1960s saw them slip into gradual decline. By the 1970s, the decline escalated that some some films like Force 10 from Navarone or Escape from Athenia made towards the end of that decade have proved to be unsuccessful in the box office. In the case of The Eagle Has landed, this film surprisingly has managed a narrow escape from the flop lists.
If some WW11 films have proved to be totally far-fetched and not history then The Eagle Has Landed must be around the top of the lists as it's about a Nazi conspiracy to kidnap the British prime minister. Chamberlain whom declared war on Germany died in the early stages having resigned from office two months previously due to terminal ill health and was succeeded by Churchill. The film was supposed to be based on the acclaimed novel by Jack Higgins but the film version was totally re-written by Tom Markiewicz. I do recall watching it for the first time in the early 1980s after being promised a good film about the Germans hatching a plan to kidnap a prime minister but while settling down with my father, he described it as "stupid".
The film is generally dull and the techniques and acting in some parts is very poor. In one scene, the small girl whom was supposed to have a fallen into the mill's waterway by accident clearly reveals her sitting on the wall for the film set-up and then she either jumped or let-go. Michael Caine's Oberst Kurt Steiner might look convincing but the rest of his Nazi co-conspirators are ridiculous and Donald Sutherland as an Irish thug Liam Devlin is very poor and most disliked he coaxes a would-be-traitorous girl call Molly played by Jennifer Agutter. On this movie in wartime England, it appears that some parts of the areas were patroled by a network of bungling USA forces headed by Larry Hagman's Colonel Pitt. Later, he meets his end by falling down the stairs after being shot by a Nazi agent called Joanna Grey played by Jean Marsh and then she in turn, meets her own fate. There are also other action set-ups in evidence like a Jeep looking like as if it was deliberately driven into a river but there's a similar set-up scene with a Churchill double meeting his end thanks to a security blunder, Steiner's change of plan shoots him dead.
It was the last film to be directed by John Sturges but Sturges' departure was not without controversy as Michael Caine outlined in his autobiography. Tom Markiewicz thought the script was the best he had written but Sturges did a poor job and had given up. Caine recalled that Sturges told him he only worked to earn enough money to go fishing and added that the moment the picture finished he took the money and went. Producer Jack Wiener later commented that 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. Caine also wrote that "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".
Review of The Eagle Has Landed
