Jack Higgins’ international bestseller THE EAGLE HAS LANDED (135 mins., 1977, PG; Imprint Editions/ViaVision), about a failed German plot to kidnap Winston Churchill in a quaint English village, became a sturdy – if unspectacular – thriller under the guidance of veteran director John Sturges. Michael Caine stars as the most sympathetic German in the cast, with Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Jenny Agutter, Jean Marsh, Donald Pleasence, Treat Williams and Larry Hagman acting out screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz’s cinematic distillation of Higgins’ novel.
A box-office hit that played worldwide throughout 1977, the movie version of “The Eagle Has Landed” manages to be mildly satisfying because of its cast, yet multiple reports that Sturges left the film high and dry, not participating in post-production, is something that seems evident from the finished product. This is a movie that should’ve been a lot more exciting than it is, starting from a languid first half-hour comprised of dry introductory scenes, to a pace and tone that takes forever to settle in. This is underscored by the audience’s first meet-up with Duvall, Caine and Sutherland, where it doesn’t feel like we’re meeting characters, but rather actors with specific personalities inhabiting them.
Granted there’s always a suspension of disbelief involved with a film, but getting to the point where you believe what’s happening and become invested in the drama takes an inordinate amount of time here. There’s just an overall sense of urgency lacking in the movie and even its basic blocking of various scenes (Sturges’ direction is dull to a fault), and only in the movie’s last 45 minutes does “Eagle” finally kick into another gear and hint at the tremendous potential this material had.
Nicely shot in scope, “The Eagle Has Landed” was reportedly one of Mankiewicz’s favorite scripts, yet he – along with Michael Caine – blamed Sturges for the finished product being little more than the workmanlike outing that it is. Even Lalo Schifrin’s score (whose main title had to have been temp-tracked with Michel Legrand’s score for “The Three Musketeers”) isn’t overly memorable, making this a film that manages to work because of its assembly of stars from around the globe – and provided you come into it knowing the picture as a whole doesn’t live up to the talents involved in its production.
Imprint Editions’ two-disc Limited Edition Blu-Ray follows respective ITV and Shout releases in the UK/US from years back. The HD master (2.35, 2.0 stereo) seems to be the same as those discs though the compression is fairly good here and the stereo soundtrack is robust. The set also includes the movie’s Extended Version (151 mins.) on a separate Blu-Ray, marking the premiere of the longer cut in the format – note, however, this is sourced from the best-available ITV master, meaning it’s a standard definition upscale. The image at least is fairly clean (2.35, 2.0 stereo) and includes several discarded scenes of note, even though it prolongs an already slow-going opening act.
Extra features are, of course, enjoyable across the board. These include new commentaries, one on the theatrical cut by the prolific 60s/70s action-adventure duo of Steven Jay Rubin and Steve Mitchell, and a talk on the extended version with podcaster (and prolific TV producer) Phoef Sutton, C. Courtney Joyner, and Treat Williams joining in via teleconference. There also new featurettes with Kim Newman on the movie, plus a longer audio essay on Sturges’ career involving Daniel Kremer, Nat Segaloff and Michael Schlesinger.
We also get a feature-length, two-part assembly of recently conducted crew interviews courtesy of James McCabe which are nice to have, along with, on the second disc, recycled supplements from previous ITV DVD editions, with vintage interviews, location segments, and a Mankiewicz interview among them.