Where Eagles Dare

With the spate of big film industry deaths of the last month, one person who was largely overlooked was Brian G. Hutton, who directed two films starring Clint Eastwood. The first was Where Eagles Dare, released in 1968 and starring the unlikely pairing of Eastwood and Richard Burton in a big World War II drama.

Written by spy novelist Alistair MacLean, the film is full of twists and turns, and we never quite know who is on what side. It starts simply enough--a team of seven commandos are to infiltrate a Bavarian castle--Schloss Adler, or castle of eagles--and rescue an American general who knows the secrets of D-Day. But almost none of that turns out to be true.

Burton is the leader of the team, with Eastwood as the stoic American. By 1968, Eastwood was well-known for his Spaghetti Westerns, but Burton was by far the bigger star, and the story showcases him. Eastwood mostly gets to fire machine guns.

I've always liked "mission" war pictures, like The Guns of Navarone, but Where Eagles Dare falls a little flat. For one thing, we are told that the castle is impregnable, but Burton and Eastwood get inside easily enough. Two men manage to quite a lot of damage against hundreds of German soldiers, even blowing up a bridge, taking out communication lines, and destroying much of an air fleet.

This is also one of those films that doesn't have Germans speaking German. Burton and Eastwood are supposed to be fluent in German, so when they converse in German, it's English. German officers, as was usual earlier in the century, are once again portrayed as urbane and icy. The Gestapo representative is as blond as a butterscotch brownie and looks in-bred.

Still, the film has its moments of excitement, even if it does portray the Germans as completely incompetent. You would have thought the war would have been shorter if we had guys like Burton and Eastwood were on our side.