The Eagle Has Landed (film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In the 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed, Jürgen Stroop is portrayed by the German actor Joachim Hansen (the character is simply referred to as "Herr Gruppenführer" and not by Stroop's actual name, although in the source novel by Jack Higgins, Stroop's name is used)."--Sholem Stein Father Verecker: Colonel, my one consolation is that that thanks to my sister, your plot has failed. Colonel Kurt Steiner: Really? I thought the plot failed because one of my men died saving the little girl out there. --The Eagle Has Landed (film) (1976) Col. Max Radl : Are you familiar with the works of Jung, Karl? Karl : I am aware of the works of Jung, not familiar, Herr Oberst. Col. Max Radl : A very great thinker. A rational man And yet he speaks of something called synchronicity, events having a coincidence in time, creating the feeling that a deeper motivation is involved.
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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 near the end of the Second World War.
The music is by Lalo Schifrin.
Plot
Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, is ordered by Adolf Hitler to make a feasibility study into capturing the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Although Canaris considers it a meaningless exercise that will soon be forgotten by the Führer, he knows this will not be the case with Heinrich Himmler. He therefore orders one of his staff officers, Oberst Radl, to begin a study to avoid being possibly discredited.
After Radl receives intelligence from an Abwehr sleeper agent in England saying Churchill will stay in a Norfolk village seven miles from the coast after visiting a local airfield, he begins to see potential in the operation he code-names 'Eagle'. Firstly he recruits an agent, an IRA man named Liam Devlin, who lectures at a Berlin university. Secondly he selects Kurt Steiner, a highly decorated and experienced Fallschirmjäger officer, to lead the mission. However, while the Luftwaffe parachute troops are returning from the Eastern Front, Steiner unsuccessfully attempts to save the life of a Jewish girl who is trying to escape from the SS in occupied Poland. He and his loyal men are all court-martialled and sent to a penal unit on German-occupied Alderney where their mission is to conduct near-suicidal human torpedo attacks against Allied shipping in the English Channel.
Radl is summoned to a private meeting with Himmler without Canaris' knowledge. Himmler reveals he knows all about the operation and gives Radl a letter apparently signed by Hitler to start the operations. Radl flies to Alderney where he recruits Steiner and his surviving men. The operation involves the German commandos dressing up as Polish paratroopers to infiltrate the village. They are then to capture Churchill with the help of Devlin before making their escape by a captured motor torpedo boat. Once the operation starts, Himmler retrieves the letter (signed by Hitler) that he had given to Radl, and destroys it.
On arrival in the English village, the disguised German paratroopers take up positions under the guise of conducting military exercises. However, the ruse ends after a soldier dies rescuing a child from the stream that was about to carry it into the village waterwheel. When the wheel brings up the soldier's mangled corpse, the villagers see he is wearing a German uniform underneath his Polish one (Steiner did not want them executed as spies). When everyone is rounded up and put in the village church, the vicar's sister escapes and alerts a unit of United States Army Rangers.
Colonel Pitts, the Rangers’ inexperienced and rash commander, launches a poorly planned assault on the church that results in heavy American casualties. Pitts is later killed by the village's sleeper Abwehr agent, 'Starling'. It's left to Pitts' deputy commander to reorganise and launch a second, successful attack. To delay the Americans, Steiner's men sacrifice themselves to give Devlin, Steiner and his wounded second-in-command time to escape through a hidden passage. A local girl, who has fallen for the charming Devlin, helps in the escape. At the waiting S-boat, Steiner puts his wounded second-in-command on board but says he is staying behind to kill Churchill.
On Alderney, after Radl receives news that the operation has failed, he orders his assistant Karl to immediately return to Berlin in order to seek the protection of Canaris because he now realises Himmler never had Hitler's permission for the mission. Subsequently Radl is arrested and summarily executed by an SS firing squad under the pretext that he "exceeded his orders to the point of treason".
Back in England, Steiner succeeds in killing Churchill moments before being shot dead. It is then revealed the victim was actually a double, as the real Churchill was on his way to the Tehran Conference. The torpedo boat is aground, at dead low-tide, waiting for Steiner in the inlet on the Norfolk coast. Meanwhile Devlin, evading capture, leaves a love letter for the local girl before slipping away.
Cast
- Michael Caine as Colonel (Oberst) Kurt Steiner
- Donald Sutherland as Liam Devlin
- Robert Duvall as Colonel (Oberst) Radl
- Jenny Agutter as Molly Prior
- Donald Pleasence as Himmler
- Anthony Quayle as Admiral Wilhelm Canaris
- Jean Marsh as Joanna Grey
- Sven-Bertil Taube as Captain (Hauptmann) Hans Ritter von Neustadt
- John Standing as Philip Verecker
- Judy Geeson as Pamela Verecker
- Treat Williams as Captain Harry Clark
- Larry Hagman as Colonel Clarence E. Pitts
- Siegfried Rauch as Hauptfeldwebel Hans Brandt
- Michael Byrne as Feldwebel Karl Hofer
- Maurice Roeves as Major Corcoran
- Keith Buckley as Major Peter Geriecke
- Terry Plummer as Arthur Seymour
See also
