Kenneth Ross

The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as the "Jackal" who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963.

A co-production of the United Kingdom and France, the film stars Edward Fox as the Jackal, with Michael Lonsdale, Derek Jacobi, Terence Alexander, Michel Auclair, Alan Badel, Tony Britton, Cyril Cusack, Maurice Denham and Delphine Seyrig. The musical score was composed by Georges Delerue.

The Day of the Jackal received positive reviews and went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Editing (Ralph Kemplen), five additional BAFTA Award nominations (including Best Film and Best Direction), two Golden Globe Award nominations, and one Oscar nomination. The film grossed $16,056,255 at the North American box office, returning $8,525,000 in rentals to the studio. The British Film Institute ranked it the 74th greatest British film of the 20th century.

On 22 August 1962, the militant underground organisation OAS, infuriated by the French government granting independence to Algeria, attempt to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle. The assassination attempt fails, leaving de Gaulle and his entire entourage unharmed. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several other members are captured and Bastien-Thiry is executed.

The remaining OAS leaders, now hiding in Austria, plan another attempt, and hire a British assassin, who goes by the code name "Jackal", for $500,000. The Jackal travels to Genoa and commissions a custom rifle from a gunsmith, and fake identity papers from a forger, whom the Jackal kills when the man tries blackmailing him. In Paris, the Jackal duplicates a key to a sixth-floor flat overlooking the Place du 18 juin 1940.

The OAS relocate to Rome. The French Action Service kidnap the OAS's chief clerk, Viktor Wolenski. Wolenski dies under interrogation, but not before the agents extract vital information about the plot, including the word "Jackal". The Interior Minister convenes a secret cabinet meeting of the heads of the French security forces. Police Commissioner Berthier recommends his deputy, Claude Lebel, to lead the investigation. Lebel is given special emergency powers, though de Gaulle's refusal to change his planned public appearances complicates matters.

Colonel St. Clair, a personal military aide to de Gaulle and a cabinet member, carelessly discloses classified government information to his mistress, Denise, unaware she is an OAS agent. She passes this on to her contact, which, in turn, aids the Jackal. Meanwhile, Lebel determines that British suspect Charles Harold Calthrop (whose name Cha… Cal… suggests chacal, French for jackal) may be travelling under the name Paul Oliver Duggan, who died as a child, and has entered France.

Although the Jackal learns the authorities have uncovered the assassination plot, he decides to proceed. While at a hotel, the Jackal meets and seduces the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier. Warned by his contact, the Jackal leaves just before Lebel and his men arrive. After a nearly fatal vehicular accident, the Jackal steals a car and drives to Madame de Montpellier's country estate to hide out. He kills her after discovering the police have already spoken to her. Using an already stolen passport, the Jackal then assumes the identity of a bespectacled Danish schoolteacher named Per Lundquist. After disposing of Duggan's belongings in a river, he catches a train for Paris.

Madame de Montpellier's body is discovered and her car is recovered at the railway station. Lebel, no longer hindered by secrecy restrictions, launches a public manhunt. The Jackal picks up a gay man at a Turkish bathhouse and stays at the man's flat. The Jackal kills him after the man sees a TV news broadcast that "Lundquist" is wanted for murder of Madame de Montpellier.

At a meeting with the Interior Minister's cabinet, Lebel says he believes the Jackal will attempt to shoot de Gaulle during the commemoration of the liberation of Paris during World War II, scheduled three days hence. Lebel plays a recording of a phone call in which St. Clair's mistress, Denise, is heard providing information to an OAS contact. St. Clair apologises for his indiscretion and immediately leaves. When asked how he knew St. Clair was the source of the leak, Lebel says he wiretapped every cabinet member's phone. Denise returns to St. Clair's apartment and discovers that he has committed suicide and finds the police are waiting for her.

On Liberation Day, the Jackal, disguised as an elderly veteran amputee on crutches, enters a building using the key he had earlier procured. In an upper apartment overlooking the ceremonial area, he assembles the rifle hidden within his crutch and waits by the window. When Lebel discovers that a policeman allowed a disabled man to pass through the security cordon, the two race to the building. As de Gaulle presents the first medal, the Jackal takes aim but as he shoots he narrowly misses when the president suddenly leans forward. As he reloads the rifle for another shot, Lebel and the policeman burst in. The Jackal shoots the policeman, but Lebel kills him using the officer's submachine gun.

In England, while police are searching Charles Harold Calthrop's flat, the real Calthrop suddenly arrives. He accompanies them to Scotland Yard and is later cleared, leaving the police to wonder about the true identity of the assassin. The movie ends with The Jackal being buried in an unmarked grave, with Lebel as the only witness.

The Day of the Jackal was originally part of a two-picture deal between John Woolf and Fred Zinnemann, the other being an adaptation of the play Abelard and Heloise by Ronald Millar.

Universal Studios initially wanted to cast a major American actor as the Jackal, with Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson flown to Europe to audition. Although Universal favoured Nicholson, Zinnemann ultimately secured a production agreement stipulating that only European actors would be cast. Afterwards, British actors David McCallum, Ian Richardson and Michael York were considered, before Zinnemann cast Edward Fox. Jacqueline Bisset was offered the role of Denise, but had to decline due to scheduling conflicts.

Zinnemann wrote that Adrien Cayla-Legrand, the actor who played de Gaulle, was mistaken by several Parisians for the real de Gaulle during filming—though de Gaulle had been dead for two years prior to the film's release. The sequence was filmed during a real parade, leading to confusion; the crowd (many of whom were unaware that a film was being shot) mistook the actors portraying police officers for real officers, and many tried to help them arrest the "suspects" they were apprehending in the crowd.

The Day of the Jackal was filmed in studios and on location in France, Britain, Italy and Austria. Zinnemann was able to film in locations usually denied to filmmakers—such as inside the Ministry of the Interior—due in large part to French producer Julien Derode's skill in dealing with authorities. Nevertheless, the opening sequence was not shot in the Élysée courtyard but at the hôtel de Soubise, main office of the French National Archives. The two palaces were both built at the beginning of the 18th century, but the Hôtel de Soubise is more accessible and has less security than the Élysée.

During the massive annual 14 July parade down the Champs-Élysées, the company was allowed to film inside the police lines, capturing extraordinary closeup footage of the massing of troops, tanks, and artillery during the final Liberation Day sequence. During the weekend of 15 August, the Paris police cleared a very busy square of all traffic to film additional scenes.[10]

Frederick Forsyth later wrote that for the film contract to buy rights for his novel, he was offered two options: £17,500 plus a small percentage of subsequent film profits, or £20,000 and no royalties. He took £20,000, noting that such a payment was already a massive sum to him, but due to his naivety about finances, he waived rights to a small fortune in royalties given the film's enduring success.[11]

The film received positive reviews, with a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 32 reviews. The consensus summarizes: "The Day of the Jackal is a meticulously constructed thriller with surprising irreverence and taut direction."[12] Among those who praised the film was Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave it his highest rating of four stars:

Ebert concluded: "Zinnemann has mastered every detail ... There are some words you hesitate to use in a review, because they sound so much like advertising copy, but in this case I can truthfully say that the movie is spellbinding."[14] Ebert included the film at No. 7 on his list of the Top 10 films of the year for 1973.[15]

The Day of the Jackal and the resultant Academy Award nomination were career milestones for Kenneth Ross, the Scottish-American screenwriter.[A] Critics were generally favorably impressed with the film.[17] The paternity of the film is somewhat disputed.[B] The screenplay faithfully adheres to the novel, even as the latter is uncredited in the film. “This is not a bad movie, it races by and entertains, after a fashion. It simply is not as good as it should have been.”[20]

The Time film critic appreciated the transition from novel to film: "The Day of the Jackal makes one appreciate anew the wonderful narrative efficiency of the movies. Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel—essentially what mystery buffs call a police procedural, but blown up to international proportions—kept losing its basically simple story line in the forest of words. The writer required paragraphs to detail the procedures of an international man hunt, not to mention the procedures of the Jackal himself, a hired gun employed by disaffected French army officers to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. This is the kind of material that a good director can give us in the wink of a panning camera's eye.” Due to the masterful cinema and cutting skills of director Fred Zinnemann "what might have been just another expensive entertainment becomes, on a technical level, a textbook on reels in the near-forgotten subject of concise moviemaking. In short, as so often happens, a second-rate fiction has been transformed into a first-rate screen entertainment."[21] Other critics were less effusive. For example:

MacLeans Magazine’s critic called it: “.. an authentically detailed suspense story with ingenious twists. “[23] The movie is an intricate and detailed maze, but is entertaining and never tedious.[24][25] The interplay between director and author was favorably noted:

Likewise, the film critic for The Spectator opined:

The scrupulously researched “pulp thriller” provided “ the perfect template for this exhaustive procedural. In many ways, this outstanding piece of filmmaking marks the apotheosis of a certain style of thriller that has since fallen out of fashion—the mind game. [It is] “Built with the minutiae of a Swiss watch”, without blandishments. The linear plot “is made infinitely complex by the portrayal of this empty vessel of a killer by Fox. ...” An irresistible force is pitted against an immovable object—a conflict facilitated by the script.[27] There is an intricate story “with a parallel structure that details the Jackal's preparations for the assassination” and the prophylactic efforts of the detectives.[28]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.[29]

The film grossed $16,056,255 at the box office earning North American rentals of $8,525,000. Zinnemann was pleased with the film's reception at the box office, telling an interviewer in 1993: "The idea that excited me was to make a suspense film where everybody knew the end - that de Gaulle was not killed. In spite of knowing the end, would the audience sit still? And it turned out that they did, just as the readers of the book did."[30]