|
''The Day of the Jackal'' is a 1973 Anglo-French political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel ''The Day of the Jackal'' by Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as the "Jackal" who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963.〔 ''The Day of the Jackal'' received positive reviews and went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Film Editing (Ralph Kemplen), five additional BAFTA Award nominations, two Golden Globe Award nominations, and one Academy Award nomination. The film grossed $16,056,255 at the box office,〔 and earned an additional $8,525,000 in North American rentals.〔 ==Plot== In the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart on 22 August 1962, an assassination attempt is made on the President of France General Charles de Gaulle by the militant French underground organisation OAS in anger over the French government granting independence to Algeria. As the president's motorcade passes, de Gaulle's unarmoured Citroën DS car is raked with machine gun fire, but the entire entourage escapes without injury. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several other members of the plot are captured and Bastien-Thiry is executed. The remaining OAS leaders, now exiled in Vienna, decide to make another attempt, and hire a professional British assassin (Edward Fox) who chooses the code name "Jackal". Agreeing to the killer's demand of half a million US dollars for his services, the OAS leaders order several bank robberies to raise the money. Meanwhile, the Jackal begins to plan his assassination of the highly protected French president. He travels to Genoa and commissions a custom-made rifle and fake identity papers. As a professional, he spares the reliable gunsmith, but kills the forger when the man attempts blackmail. In Paris, he sneaks an impression of the key to a flat that overlooks the Place du 18 juin 1940. In Rome, where the OAS team have moved, members of the French Action Service identify and kidnap the OAS chief clerk Viktor Wolenski (Jean Martin). Wolenski dies under interrogation but not before the agents have extracted some elements of the assassination plot, including the word "Jackal", and reported their findings to the Interior Minister (Alan Badel) who convenes a secret cabinet meeting of the heads of the French security forces. When asked to provide his best detective, the Police Commissioner Berthier (Timothy West) recommends his own deputy, Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale). Soon after, Lebel is given special emergency powers to conduct his investigation, which is complicated by de Gaulle's express orders for secrecy and his refusal to change any of his planned public appearances. As the investigation progresses, Colonel St. Clair (Barrie Ingham): a personal aide to the President and one of the cabinet members, discloses the government's knowledge of the plot through pillow talk to his new mistress Denise (Olga Georges-Picot). Denise is an OAS plant and immediately passes this information on to her contact. Meanwhile, Lebel uses an old boy network of police agencies in other countries to determine that British suspect Charles Calthrop may be travelling under the name Paul Oliver Duggan, who appears in British records as someone who died as a child. Learning that Duggan has crossed into France, Lebel orders his men to search all hotel registrations in an effort to locate the killer. After learning from his OAS contact that his code name is known, the Jackal still decides to carry on with his plan. He meets and seduces the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier (Delphine Seyrig) in a hotel in Grasse. Just before Lebel and his men arrive, the Jackal eludes his pursuers in his Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, and drives to Madame de Montpellier's estate; he is almost killed in a car accident and forced to leave his Alfa Romeo behind, but he successfully reaches the Countess' country mansion. After sleeping with her again and discovering that the police had talked to her, he strangles her. The Jackal then assumes the identity of a bespectacled Danish school teacher called Per Lundquist, using a stolen Danish passport. He drives Madame de Montpellier's Renault Caravelle to the railway station at Tulle and catches a train for Paris. After Madame de Montpellier's body is discovered, and her car is recovered at the Tulle railway station, Lebel initiates an open manhunt for a murderer—his investigation no longer hindered by forced secrecy. After checking the train schedule, he rushes to the Paris Austerlitz railway station, just a few minutes after the Jackal arrived. Looking to avoid hotels that are now being monitored, the Jackal goes to a Turkish bathhouse, where he allows himself to be picked up by a man and taken to his flat. The next day, the Jackal kills his host after the man learns from a television news flash that "Lundquist" is wanted for Madame de Montpellier's murder. Meanwhile, at a meeting with the Interior Minister's cabinet, Lebel admits that the Jackal has not checked into any Paris hotel under his new identity. He informs the senior officials and officers present that they have three days to find the killer, who will most likely attempt to shoot de Gaulle on Liberation Day, 25 August, during the ceremony honouring members of the French Resistance. Later, Lebel plays a tape recording of a phone call made from the home of one of the cabinet members. The cabinet hears St. Clair's mistress Denise passing along information about the manhunt to her OAS contact. The colonel acknowledges that the call was made by a friend who is staying with him and leaves the meeting. Denise returns to St. Clair's apartment to find that he has killed himself and that the police are waiting for her. On Liberation Day, the Jackal, disguised as an elderly veteran amputee, is allowed access to the building he had cased earlier. He assembles his rifle, which is disguised as one of his crutches, and takes up a position at a window in an upper apartment. When de Gaulle enters the square to present medals to veterans of the Resistance, the Jackal takes aim. Downstairs, Lebel questions the policeman who allowed the disguised Jackal to pass, and the two run to the building. As de Gaulle presents the first medal, the Jackal shoots just as the president leans down to kiss the recipient on the cheek. Because de Gaulle was so tall (196 cm, 6'5"), he had to bend down quite far, and the bullet misses. When Lebel and the policeman burst into the apartment, the Jackal turns and shoots the policeman, killing him. As the Jackal tries to re-load, Lebel picks up the policeman's MAT-49 submachine gun and kills the assassin. Back in Britain, the real Charles Calthrop enters his flat surprising the police, who realise the Jackal's real name was not Charles Calthrop after all. At the cemetery, Lebel watches as the Jackal's coffin is lowered into an unmarked grave. As in the novel, the authorities wonder, "But if the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then ''who'' the hell ''was'' he?" 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Day of the Jackal (film)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|