Reeling Backward: "Where Eagles Dare" (1968)

"Where Eagles Dare" is a substandard World War II action/adventure film with a few notable qualities.

Clint Eastwood had just become an American film star, after the Spaghetti Western trilogy was released here in 1967. He'd also had modestly successful turns starring in "Hang 'Em High" and "Coogan's Bluff." This movie was an opportunity to play a supporting role opposite a huge international star like Richard Burton in a big-budget extravaganza.

Eastwood's role, and performance, are both rather flat, since the script doesn't really give him much to do other than execute action scenes and occasionally grunt out one-liners in response to Burton's wittier quips. It would be a long time before Eastwood played a supporting role again.

The story is simple in concept but convoluted in the telling. An American general with secret war plans is captured by the Germans after his plane crashes, and held in a remote base, Schloss Adler (actually Hohenwerfen Castle), which sits on a high peak and can only be accessed by cable car. A crack team of British agents, with Eastwood as the token Yank, are sent in to disguise themselves as German soldiers, infiltrate the base and rescue the general.

At 154 minutes, the movie is overlong and pedantic. Once the mission gets started, the action unspools in more or less real time. That's a fine technique if it's used to build tension, but here director Brian G. Hutton and screenwriter Alistair MacLean focus too much on the minutia -- getting in and out of vehicles, donning or doffing disguises, setting explosive charges, etc. It reads more like a primer on how to infiltrate a WWII German base than a dramatization of a team doing it.

Incidentally, Alistair wrote the book and screenplay together, both becoming hits. This was his first screenplay; he'd had a number of his novels turned into movies, most notably "The Guns of Navarone" and "Ice Station Zebra." A producer asked him to come up with an original idea, and he delivered the script six weeks later. This is interesting in that movies had been made before based on books that were not yet published, but this was an early, rare case where the book came after the script.

The film's stunts and special effects were, for 1968, pretty impressive stuff. Hutton and cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson employed front-screen projection effects -- a progenitor of the modern green screen technique -- to depict the scenes where the spy team infiltrate the base by riding on top of the cable car, plus the daredevil fight scene on the way back down. Burton and Eastwood spent so much time waiting in the wings while stand-ins and stuntmen took their place that they took to referring to the production as "Where Doubles Dare."

I found it hilarious that the filmmakers made absolutely no attempt to shift from English to German as the team infiltrates behind enemy lines. Usually movies of this ilk will do a single scene in the other language, then show some sort of transition to let the audience know that English will stand in for whatever. Here, everyone just speaks English all the time -- except for a few gunfights where the German officers yell commands in their own language.

But probably the thing that makes "Where Eagles Dare" stand out -- and not in a good way -- is its unnecessarily twisty and occasionally incomprehensible plot. Hutton and MacLean take their good time clearing the air. For a long while we're not sure of the motivations of Burton's character, Maj. John Smith. Once they get into the German town below the base, he meets up with a beautiful woman spy named Mary (Mary Ure) with whom he apparently has a long-standing romantic relationship. She appears to be a member of the team that Smith has not even told his commanders back home about.

Other members of the team start dying mysteriously, one by one. The clear implication is that one of their own operatives is doing the dirty work -- perhaps even Smith himself? Maybe the stoic American (Eastwood), Lt. Morris Schaffer?

Things finally come to a head in a sprawling, ridiculous scene inside the castle's great hall. Smith and Schaffer, having been separated from the three remaining members of their squad, burst in on the German general (Ferdy Mayne) and colonel (Anton Diffring) interrogating the captured American general (Robert Beatty).

Here's where things get really hinky, and absurd. It would seem that everyone is trying to double-cross everyone else. The result is a rambling sequence that goes on for nearly 15 minutes, with Burton as the mastermind pulling all the strings. He appears to change sides several times, resulting in what I believe is the exceedingly rare and dramatically unhinged quintuple-cross:

1. Smith reveals that the American captive is in fact a thespian corporal selected to impersonate the general.
2. The other three NCO members of Smith's team, who supposedly were "captured" while infiltrating the base, turn out to be German double agents. They've been killing the other Brits and have been trying to ensure the mission's failure.
3. Smith claims that in fact he is the double agent working for the Germans, while the NCOs are actually triple agents who really work for England. He makes Schaffer drop his weapon and has the German colonel phone up another German intelligence officer to confirm his identity. In order to prove that the NCOs are not who they say they are, he has them write down the names of every German spy stationed in London, to compare to his own original list.
4. Smith hands his original to the German colonel, who is enraged to find it is blank. It turns out it's Smith who's really a triple agent, and the NCOs are who they say they are, double agents. Smith has spent the last two years feeding false information to his German counterpart to set up the identity of a double agent. Really, he's been working for the Brits all along. Schaffer is allowed to retrieve his gun again. Smith announces that the entire operation, including planting the false general and infiltrating the base, was a scam to allow them to expose the German double agents in the U.K. and obtain the names of their collaborators.
5. A German Gestapo major bursts in on them, demanding to know what is going on. Smith bluffs that he has just uncovered a plot to assassinate the Fuhrer and placed everyone in the room under arrest. Sufficiently distracted, it allows Schaffer to get the drop on him and shoot the Gestapo officer. The German colonel and General get bullets, too.

 Got all that straight? I seriously doubt if audiences back in 1968 did.

The sequence inadvertently turns into a total laugh fest, as Smith jumps from one side to the other and back again, and concocts one outlandish tale in succession. In the end it felt like an "Austin Powers" spoof -- "I'm on your side!" "Actually, I was fooling you!" "No I wasn't!" "He's the triple agent!" "No I am!"

After having executed such (in his mind) brilliant espionage moves, Smith then spends the last hour of the movie behaving like a numbskull as they attempt to fight their way out of the base. For some reason, Smith takes along the three NCO double agents, who have to be kept covered and inevitably fight back -- on top of that cable car, of course.

Why would he bring them? He's already gotten the information he needed out of them -- what could possibly be gained from keeping them around? Well, because somebody has to be left for that dramatic cable car melee.

"Where Eagles Dare" is one of the most bone-headed and turgid spy thrillers I've ever seen. Other than the primitive use of green screens and some cool stunts, this bird falls to earth with a thud.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Fahrenheit 451" (1966)

Francois Truffaut called "Fahrenheit 451" his "saddest and most difficult" filmmaking experience, and it's not hard to see this disappointment translated onto the screen.

Star Oskar Werner battled throughout the production with the filmmaker, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Louis Richard, based on the seminal novel by science fiction icon Ray Bradbury. It was Truffaut's first film in English and with color.

Werner was Austrian and spoke English with a heavy accent, which makes him stand out from the rest of the cast, which is largely British. Truffaut himself spoke little English, and as a result he failed to properly monitor the tone and intonation of his actors. Most speak in a curiously flat cadence, like Werner, or rush through their dialogue as if they're in a race, like Cyril Cusack.

These things could actually work for the film, since it's about a dystopian future where all books are banned and society molds its citizenry into anti-intellectual complacency. Since people talk without thinking, their speech would tend to be scattered. And because Montag is a  fireman who eventually rebels against his comrades, in some ways it makes sense for him to be different from the pack.

But I think these are not attributes of the movie; rather, they are unintentional problems that creep into the mix. Truffaut himself preferred the French-dubbed version of the film, by all accounts.

Of course, in Bradbury's haunting vision, firemen do not put out infernos but start them -- bursting into houses, jackbooted thugs dressed in militaristic black uniforms. They are highly trained in the ways of hiding, and uncover all the illegal books in the abode and set them ablaze. If enough books are found, they may just condemn the entire house and put it to the flamethrower torch.

As the story opens, Montag is the finest fireman in his station, and is informed that he has been selected to replace the Captain (Cusack) when he retires shortly. But with the help of a young schoolteacher who lives near him, Montag begins secreting away the books and reading them instead of destroying them. All that reading gets him to thinking, which is the last thing the controllers of this strangled society want.

What's interesting about "Fahrenheit" the movie is that the leaders of this system are never glimpsed or overtly referred to. Bradbury often said that his book was not about censorship so much as the way television and a lack of reading has a brain-deadening effect on people. Large television "wall sets" occupy every home, blaring virtually nonstop and lulling viewers into a state of dreamlike passivity.

We see the effects wrought by the great and mighty Oz, but not Oz himself. Who actually runs the government and the media? We never know.

In perhaps the film's strangest scene, Montag's wife Linda is selected to "appear" in a live play broadcast over the airwaves. (It's never made explicit, but it seems clear that there is only one channel playing.) This consists of two men discussing arrangements for a dinner party, and occasionally turning toward the camera to seek as Linda's advice, which she delivers from memorized dialogue. Presumably, the rest of the audience sees Linda's responses during this time. She flubs her first line, but the play keeps rolling along as if nothing happened.

Linda is played by Julie Christie, who also plays the rebellious schoolteacher Clarisse (wearing a horrendously fake-looking wig.) Truffaut obviously sees Clarisse and Linda as two sides of the same coin, but the gimmick casting is a distraction. (Terence Stamp, who was cast prior to Werner, left the project because he felt Christie's dual roles would upstage him.)

The only other notable actor is Anton Diffring as Fabian, a fellow fireman, Montag antagonist and competitor for his position. I'm not sure if he ever speaks more than a line or two of dialogue; the role operates strictly by having the hawk-faced Diffring cast suspicious glances at Montag from time to time.

Visually, the film is an orgy of oversaturated colors, intended I think to give everything a hyper-real look that's supposed to be disconcerting.Truffaut's camera work is surprisingly staid and pedestrian -- other than a few pans, the view hardly ever seems to move. The musical score, highlighted by a fast-paced little march whenever the firemen are on the move, is repetitive and silly.

Truffaut stripped much of the futuristic science fiction elements out of the story, perhaps to make it more relatable to everyday life but probably also for budgetary concerns. The one genuinely "sci-fi" shot, of a group of policemen wearing jet-packs searching the countryside for Montag, is simply laughable. They move in precise formation, instead of spreading out to make their search more effective. I think Truffaut was simply enamored of the image, logic be damned.

A morality lesson with little juice, "Fahrenheit 451" never brings the human story to a boil.

2 stars out of four