Reeling Backward: "The Day of the Jackal" (1973)

"The Day of the Jackal" was my father's favorite film. Or I should say it is his favorite film. I'm not sure what the proper term to use is when the person is no longer with us but the movie endures.

I'd like to think that love survives death, whether for another person or a work of art, so we'll choose the present tense.

The film has just been released in a gorgeous Blu-ray special edition out Sept. 25 that includes plenty of nifty bonus material.

I saw it with him first on HBO when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and my lifelong love of cinema was already in full bloom. I remember sitting together in our living room, him on his recliner in the corner and me lying on the ground directly in front of the TV with my head propped against a triangular pillow, my usual spot. Several other viewings took place together over the years.

He, and I, adore the absolute leanness of the narrative. Even at 142 minutes, there is not an ounce of fat in this spy thriller about a British assassin hired by French insurgents to kill President Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963. It's essentially a crime procedural, but instead of following the investigators as they look into a deed already committed, it's a parallel race as we track the titular killer striving to finish his contract while an international cadre of law enforcement types scrambles to prevent it.

Many movies would go on to copy this style, including 1993's "In the Line of Fire." Although there is a cast of hundreds, the story very much focuses on two figures just like the Clint Eastwood film, the assassin and the man leading the hunt. Though here there's no ongoing taunting between hero and villain as they engage in their intricate dance, only meeting at the very end.

Indeed, the film has such an incredible sense of verisimilitude, weaving actual events and locations in with fictional ones, that I had long assumed it was based on a genuine assassination attempt. In fact, the inspiration comes from the 1971 fictional novel by Frederick Forsyth, adapted for the screen by Kenneth Ross and directed by the great Fred Zinneman ("High Noon," "From Here to Eternity").

This is perhaps the signature role of Edward Fox's career, displaying an icy charm as the Jackal, aka Charles Calthrop, known as the best hit man in England, and perhaps the world. He's a chameleon-like figure, putting on and taking off identities like changes of his well-tailored suits. A compact man with a lean, boyish figure and feathered blond hair, the Jackal is as suave as anyone who's played James Bond.

The strength of "Jackal" is that we find ourselves rooting for the Jackal and his nemesis, Deputy Police Commissioner Claude Lebel (Michel Lonsdale). Like the Jackal, Lebel displays a single-minded commitment in his pursuit of his goal, literally sleeping in his office for weeks on end, assisted only by his loyal number two (Derek Jacobi).

Both men also have a tendency to be curt and impatient with those who stand in the way of his goals. The difference being that the Jackal simply kills anyone who opposes him, while Lebel hunkers down and burrows into the weak spots of the bureaucracy.

No doubt my dad's favorite moment of the film comes late when Lebel reveals the leak within the cabinet of French ministers who have been sworn to secrecy on the affair. One of them had been seduced by an insurgent spy, and Lebel plays a recording of her feeding information from his phone. Confessing his weakness, the guilty man leaves the meeting abruptly (and later commits suicide).

The ministers are pleased, having been generally dismissive of Lebel, seeing him as a low-level flunky -- not a government official but a gumshoe cop. As the meeting is breaking up, the haughty chief minister (Alan Badel) asks him how he knew which of their personal phone lines to tap. Not even bothering to look up from his papers, Lebel states that he couldn't know which of them was the source of the leak, so he tapped all of their phones.

Zinnemann holds this moment for the briefest of seconds, just long enough to register the shocked faces of the high and mighty. In our shared viewings, this was always followed by my father's high-pitched cackle of glee.

I won't bother with a detailed plot synopsis. Suffice it to say, members of the OAS -- a real splinter group of French military enraged by de Gaulle's decision to grant Algeria independence -- hire the Jackal after their own assassination attempts fail and they are forced into hiding in Rome.

He's a one-man show, doing all the planning and scouting personally. His only help is a weapons expert who creates the nifty collapsible rifle that can be disguised as a pair of crutches, and a pornographer who makes false ID's on the side. The latter tries to bribe the Jackal out of an extra £1,000, and finds himself stuffed into a locker for his trouble.

As he executes his intricate plan, the Jackal moves from England to Italy to France, swapping out vehicles and passports as needed. He even displays a pan-sexual mercenary attitude, seducing both a wealthy married woman (Delphine Seyrig) and a young gay businessman (Anton Rodgers) when he finds the need to hide out from the authorities. In the movie's historically accurate depiction of 1963, the only way authorities had to track tourists' movements was through hotel guest cards, picked up manually by motorcycle police.

"The Day of the Jackal" is not a character study, but the film does find ways to penetrate the interiors of its chief two characters. The Jackal's cover is blown early in the execution of the plan, yet he stubbornly continues with the attempt, even knowing he's a single man arrayed against thousands of Europe's best law enforcement officers.

Why? Partly it's personal arrogance, of course, but we also sense a large helping of professional ambition. In his initial meeting with the OAS leaders, the Jackal demanded a payment of $500,000 (just over $4 million in today's dollars) with the justification that whoever pulls off the job "can never work again." In other words, whether de Gaulle lives or dies the Jackal knows that his career as an international assassin is over -- and he's rather go out with a win.

Taut, supremely entertaining and with never a dull moment, "The Day of the Jackal" may not be one of my all-time favorite films. But I can't disagree with my dad -- it deserves its place as one of the best thriller ever made.

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

Reeling Backward: "The Tenth Man" (1988)

I don't usually write about television movies, but 1988's "The Tenth Man" has more cinematic roots than most TV.

It was based on a novel by Graham Greene, whose work has been the basis for a number of movies -- "The End of the Affair," "The Quiet American," "The Third Man," etc. And director Jack Gold had plenty of feature film experience as well as television.

And, of course, it stars a trio of magnificent English film actors: Anthony Hopkins, Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi. Given that pedigree, I'm willing to give it an honorary inclusion into the Reeling Backward club.

It's a tragic tale about fear and regret, and the impossibility of escaping the past. Its hero begins the story in shame, and ends it with a brave sacrifice. He is a liar and a coward, and yet culminates his journey ennobled.

Hopkins plays Jean Louis Chavel, a wealthy French barrister who is rounded up by the Nazis in the early days of the German occupation of France. There is no reason for his arrest, or I should say there is no particular reason that he should be among those arrested -- he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Germans are plucking men off the street at random to hold as hostages. Whenever the French Resistance stage any sort of violence, a few of the prisoners are executed.

(I should note that although all the major characters are French, everyone speaks in the finest upper-crust British accents -- one of those conceits of filmmaking we're asked to just swallow.)

Sure enough, after some trouble the Germans announce that three of 30 Frenchmen will be executed in the morning. As an added twist of the knife, they will force the prisoners themselves to choose from among their number the condemned. After drawing lots, Chavel is horrified to find he has gotten one of the three pieces of paper with an "X" on it.

After breaking down in a tearful display, Chavel offers to give 100,000 francs to any man who will take his place. When this fails to net any takers, he increases the deal to include everything he owns, including his mansion estate in the countryside near Paris. Michel Mangeot (Timothy Watson), a sickly young man, agrees to the bargain, and sees to it that Chavel himself makes out the legal papers leaving everything to Michel's sister and mother.

Interestingly, the title refers not to Chavel, who is actually the 27th of 30 prisoners to draw lots, but Michel, who nabs the 10th ballot. Or perhaps it's just a reference to one in 10 men being executed ... but that would mean there were three Tenth Men. No, I think it's Michel. I'm always fascinated by movie titles that don't mean what they appear to, like "The Last of the Mohicans," which refers not to Hawkeye but his adoptive father, Chingachgook. 

Flash to the end of the war, and a bedraggled Chavel emerges from prison, bearded and wearing ragged clothes. Finding a ring in the cobblestones near the Seine River -- which he had contemplated hurling himself into -- he pawns it for enough money to travel to his former estate. He finds the grounds overgrown and the shutter hanging askew, but otherwise the house is intact. Chavel is startled to discover that it is not in fact abandoned, but still occupied by Michel's sister Therese Mangeot (Scott Thomas) and her elderly mother (Brenda Bruce).

He gives Therese a fictitious name, suspecting that she may blame him for the death of Michel -- a wise move. Turns out she is boiling with rage, waiting for the day Chavel returns so she can spit in his face and shoot him (though not necessarily in that order). He tells her he was in prison with her brother and knew Chavel, so she hires him as a servant. His main job is to alert her if Chavel should ever turn up.

There's a bit of literary conceit there, especially the idea that Chavel's former neighbors and the local priest (Cyril Cusack) wouldn't recognize him after being away just three years and growing a beard.

You can probably guess what happens next: Chavel finds himself falling for Therese, but can't bring himself to declare his true identity and feelings, knowing she burns with hatred for him.

It's a very subtle, interior performance by Hopkins, the sort of thing that typified his career before he won an Oscar for "Silence of the Lambs" three years later. The way his eyes fall to the floor, and his hands rub his forehead and cheek, it's almost like Chavel is trying to hide from himself. It would be interesting to know what sort of man he was before the war, bu the movie doesn't provide much illumination before he's thrown in prison.

Things grow more melodramatic in the last third or so with the arrival of an impostor (Derek Jacobi) claiming to be Chavel. The son of one of the other prisoners, he heard the story of Chavel and decided to make use of it. He's on the run from the authorities for collaborating with the Germans and needs a place to stay for the night. But smartly sensing the odd dynamic unfolding in the Chavel mansion, he decides to make a play for bigger stakes.

I enjoyed "The Tenth Man" for the most part -- the acting is splendid, and it has a dour, sober quality and an authentic period feel. Sort of "Masterpiece Theatre" meets Dostoevsky.

2.5 stars out of four