The Day of the Jackal

The Day of the Jackal (Fred Zinnemann, 1973) Not to be confused with the lousy 1997 retread (rather than remake)The Jackal with Bruce Willis and a ludicrously accented Richard Gere "acting the maggot" that was dumbed down for its target audience (Assassinate General DeGaulle?  Who's that?  Make it the First Lady, instead!).

This one actually is based on the Frederick Forsythe best-seller, and done in as nondescript a way as possible, almost a prettified documentary style lacking stars (although Michael Lonsdale and Edward Fox would emerge from it with solid character-actor careers), but adhering stoically to the plot and its amoral assassin (Fox), both as cold as they come.

The Jackal is teflon—never been photographed, only rumors to his existence, but, he is hired to take out France's President by a cadre of disgraced French Foreign Legion Generals. Their own clumsy attempt having failed, they turn to an outsider, anonymous, unknown but to have been involved with earlier assassinations.  Because it is a once-in-a-lifetime "hit," he demands half a million dollars on which to retire.

The movie then runs along two parallel paths of suspense, as the Jackal arms, plans, and sneaks his way into France, while the authorities, led by the cool-as-a-cucumber-sandwich Lebel (Lonsdale), after hearing rumors about an attempt, try to find information within their own circle about a man that no one has seen.

They might as well be chasing a ghost. The Jackal assumes identities, habits and companions, then discards them like an unneeded skin as he moves inexorably to a point in time and place that only he knows, with murderous equipment well-hidden, to meet his target. He is one man. But, the police and government authorities are many, though at times it seems less an advantage. What is fascinating is the amoral methods of the two opponents, Jackal and Lebel. The former is a determined sociopath, leaving a trail of bodies that are found only days behind him, while Lebel, entrusted with the life of the most powerful man in France, has no qualms about disrupting those of others, refusing to let decorum, jurisdiction, or bureaucratic bumbledom stand in his way. He is, after all, fighting someone he doesn't know in order to prevent a crime he doesn't know where and he doesn't know when.

The script (by Kenneth Ross) is also morally ambiguous—not commenting either way on the actions of hunter and hunted. In one astounding scene (only in that it is not astounding at all), The Jackal discards a temporary lover in a manner that seems like an embrace, only her stillness informs that she is, in fact, deceased.  Cerebrally chilly, and damned clever, the absence of stars might have made it less successful at the box-office (Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson, and Roger Moore were considered potential Jackals, but the producers went with the less-well-known Fox so he could "blend"), but The Day of the Jackal is still a film exercise in meticulous suspense, and becomes the novel well. Even if one already knows the outcome based on historical facts (DeGaulle died of a ruptured blood vessel two weeks shy of his 80th birthday, in 1970), it stills mesmerizes and keeps one on a taut edge, and that is a measure of good film-making, transplanting reality with illusion..

Kaleidoscope (1966)

Kaleidoscope (Jack Smight, 1966) Very slight entertainment and very much of the 60's about a grifter, Barney Lincoln (Warren Beatty), who comes up with an undetectable (if somewhat complicated work-intensive) system for cheating at cards—let's just say it starts at the manufacturing process and leave it at that), then gallivants around Europe playing poker at specific casino's that will be easy prey to his scheme.  

It's shot off the cuff (in a slightly more disciplined manner than, say, Richard Lester of that same period), has two stylish stars in Beatty and Susannah York in a sort of fly-by-night romance of convenience, and some rather nice acting turns by Clive Revill (as the Scotland Yard detective who stumbles on to the plot and, rather than prosecute Lincoln, decides it would be better to employ his ploy to bring down a more dangerous target) and a weirdly affected Eric Porter (as that intended target). 

Smight had just come off the Paul Newman vehicle Harper, and he could be counted on to keep things well-lit and bereft of any subtlety or nuance, or even sub-text, that might get in the way of enjoying the film. But where Harper had an early 60's feel to it that clashed with some of the more ornate aspects of the screenplay (a California self-help cult, for instance), Kaleidoscope has a fey mod-Bond smell to it, that would turn into a five alarm conflagration with the next year's Casino Royale (five directors and no sense). Thank God, Smight didn't take it that far, instead having the villain of the piece (and one is not entirely sure what villainy he intends) resemble Napoleon, and throwing some stylish touches to the art direction.

"...claustrophobic and closed-in."

Smight started his career in television and would bounce back and forth between the two mediums with the winds of fortune and box-office. His TV projects usually rose above the limitations of the medium, but his movies never seemed suited for theaters, feeling claustrophobic and closed-in...as if they were made for television. Not as witty as it would like to be, and not as stylish as it attempts, Kaleidoscope is a diversion. But nothing more.