A secret military organization, the OAS, believing French President Charles de Gaulle has betrayed the nation by giving Algeria its independence, backs an assassination attempt in July 1962 that fails. A year later, the OAS steps up its efforts, hiring a professional killer who goes by the code name The Jackal for $500,000. The Jackal, believed responsible for the murder of Dominican leader Trujillo and at least one other head of state in Africa, sets out on an elaborate plan using forged identity papers, a weapon hand-crafted according to his specifications, and a mole in De Gaulle's staff to tip him off to any information authorities may gather about him. The story cuts back and forth in the cat-and-mouse game between the ever-elusive Jackal and the French authorities trying to stop him before it¿ too late. When De Gaulle makes a series of public appearances on Liberation Day, The Jackal has foiled all attempts to stop him and takes his sniper's position.
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Producers: John Woolf, Julien Derode, David Deutsch
Screenplay: Kenneth Ross, based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth
Cinematography: Jean Tournier
Editing: Ralph Kemplen
Art Direction: Willy Holt, Ernest Archer
Music: Georges Delerue
Cast: Edward Fox (The Jackal), Michel Auclair (Col. Rolland), Delphine Seyrig (Collette), Alan Badel (Minister), Derek Jacobi (Caron).
C-143m. Closed captioning.
At the time of its release, some critics said The Day of the Jackal was a rare case of a film far surpassing the source material on which it was based. Adapting Frederick Forsyth's hugely popular international bestseller to the screen was no simple task. Knowing audiences would be very familiar with the story, director Fred Zinnemann and screenwriter Kenneth Ross followed the book faithfully. But where Forsyth had to describe the details of a fictional assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle in an excessively verbose novel, Zinnemann was able to take viewers through the intricate plot by means of the efficient visual narrative conventions of film, using very little dialogue. The film skillfully intercuts between the painstaking detective work of the French authorities to foil the scheme and The Jackal's brilliant steps to carry out the plan while evading several near captures and maintaining his secret identity.
To achieve this effect, Zinnemann employed a semi-documentary style he had honed in a few previous pictures (The Men, 1950, Teresa, 1951). Returning to the screen after a seven-year hiatus, the Austrian-born Zinnemann, one of the most acclaimed directors of post-war American cinema, had to shift gears considerably. Known for stories that tested the conscience of his protagonists, among them High Noon (1952) and A Man for All Seasons (1966), Zinnemann abandoned character development for plot mechanics. Still, creating suspense was a major challenge. Because De Gaulle was never assassinated and lived several years beyond the 1963 setting of the story, audiences knew from the beginning that the assassination attempt would fail. Some critics considered this historical awareness a drawback, but Zinnemann was nevertheless able to create a sense of tension by having The Jackal slip from the hands of authorities several times. We know The Jackal will fail, but we don't know how and when his pursuers will stop him, and we are surprised by the other murders the assassin commits along the way to keep his scheme on track.
Zinnemann instead focuses our attention on tiny details that become fascinating in the telling: (SPOILER ALERT) The Jackal's specifics about the kind of weapon he commissions especially for the task, an odd set of demands that becomes clear at the end when he converts the crutches he uses in his last clever disguise into a long-range rifle; the hints of multiple identities he establishes early on that become more real as he switches between them to elude capture; the unexpected move De Gaulle makes, bending down suddenly to greet a much-shorter man so that The Jackal¿ first shot misses. Zinnemann attends to the tiniest details to lend the film an authenticity that, regardless of the historical facts we already know, makes the assassination seem plausible and possible.
The race against time set up by the film also works to foster audience identification with The Jackal, especially since the government officials bent on stopping him often seem inept and their efforts futile. Edward Fox brings a suave attractiveness to the role, depicting the assassin as a kind of evil James Bond, right down to the meetings with weapons specialists (like Bond's Q) and dalliances with beautiful women encountered along the way. And here is a telling comparison that makes the awareness of De Gaulle's true death (not by assassination) almost irrelevant: In Bond pictures, we know 007 will succeed in his mission, yet we are constantly enthralled by how he will do it and by his close calls with death and capture. The historical truth of the outcome of De Gaulle's real life adds to this identification; because we know The Jackal is a fictional character who will fail, we can almost root for him, as opposed to someone like Lee Harvey Oswald, who history (at least the official version we've been given) informs us was a real killer.
Later films would also wring suspense despite foregone conclusions, such as Executive Action (1973) and JFK (1991), both dealing with the murder of President John F. Kennedy, or All the President's Men (1976), about the uncovering of the Watergate conspiracy. Zinnemann's work here can be seen as something of a blueprint for how to hold attention and create excitement even when the outcome is well known.
The Day of the Jackal is notable as the first major Anglo-French co-production. The cast employed top-notch actors from both countries who were not yet well known, especially in America, heightening the semi-documentary approach and keeping the focus on the mechanics of the plot rather than tipping the balance toward star turns.
by Rob Nixon
