The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel 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. It stars Edward Fox as the title character, with Michael Lonsdale, Derek Jacobi, Terence Alexander, Michel Auclair, Alan Badel, Donald Sinden, Tony Britton, Cyril Cusack, Maurice Denham and Delphine Seyrig. The musical score was composed by Georges Delerue.
A co-production of the United Kingdom and France, The Day of the Jackal received positive reviews and went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Editing (Ralph Kemplen), five additional nominations (including Best Film and Best Direction), two Golden Globe Award nominations, and one Oscar nomination. The film grossed $16,056,255 at the North American box office, returning $8,525,000 in rentals to the studio. In 1999, the British Film Institute ranked it the 74th greatest British film of the 20th century.
A remake of the film was released in 1997. A TV adaptation of the novel and film aired on Sky Atlantic in 2024.
Plot The far-right Organisation armée secrète ("Secret Army Organisation") plots to assassinate President de Gaulle. The first attempt on 22 August fails, leaving de Gaulle and his entourage unharmed. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several members are captured, and Bastien-Thiry is executed. The remaining OAS leaders, hiding in Austria, hatch a new plan. They enlist the services of an apolitical British assassin given the code name "The Jackal," a figure already credited with the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo. The Jackal is aware targeting de Gaulle is extremely risky, but desires a comfortable retirement in anonymity. He insists on a fee of $500,000, half to be paid upfront into his Swiss bank account. The OAS uses its extensive network to raise the money through a series of bank robberies.
Preparing for his mission, the Jackal travels to Genoa where he commissions a custom single-shot rifle from a skilled gunsmith and secures fake identity papers, later killing the forger when he attempts to extort him. In Paris, the Jackal duplicates a key to a flat overlooking a square, setting the stage for the planned assassination. The OAS leadership has meanwhile relocated to Rome, still under the scrutiny of French security forces. French intelligence kidnap the OAS's chief clerk, Viktor Wolenski, who dies during interrogation but not before revealing crucial details of the plot, including the code word "Jackal". The Interior Minister convenes with top security officials and Police Commissioner Berthier recommends his deputy, Claude Lebel, lead the investigation under the constraints of secrecy. Lebel is granted special emergency powers despite de Gaulle's insistence on maintaining his public schedule.
Colonel St Clair, who is de Gaulle's personal military aide and a cabinet member, divulges classified details to his new mistress, Denise, an OAS agent. At the same time, Lebel is informed by Special Branch that a British national, Charles Harold Calthrop, might be connected to the assassination plot and travelling under an alias. The Jackal learns his plot is compromised, but decides to press forward with the mission. He seduces the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier in a hotel in Nice, but narrowly evades capture by Lebel and his team. He survives a motor vehicle collision and flees to Madame de Montpellier's country estate, and kills her when she reveals the police have already questioned her. Dyeing his hair and donning spectacles, he assumes another identity, that of a Danish schoolteacher, Per Lundquist, and boards a train for Paris.
Madame de Montpellier's murder allows Lebel to drop secrecy constraints and launch a public manhunt. The Jackal temporarily hides at the flat of a man he picks up in a Turkish bath, killing him when the man learns of Montpellier's murder. At a subsequent cabinet meeting, Lebel predicts the Jackal will try to shoot de Gaulle during the upcoming Liberation Day ceremony marking Paris's liberation during World War II. Lebel is dismissed from the investigation so the Minister can assumes personal command, and is then reinstated less than a day later when the Minister recognizes Lebel's expertise.
On Liberation Day, the Jackal disguises himself as an elderly French veteran, conceals his rifle within crutches, and accesses the room overlooking the ceremony. He takes aim but de Gaulle unexpectedly leans forward while presenting a medal, and the Jackal's shot narrowly misses. Jackal reloads for a second attempt, and Lebel and a gendarme storm the room. The Jackal kills the policeman before being fatally shot by Lebel.
Back in London, the real Charles Calthrop arrives at his flat, interrupting policemen sifting through his belongings. The assassin is interred in an unmarked grave, leaving the true identity behind his many disguises an enduring mystery.
Cast
Production The Day of the Jackal was originally part of a two-picture deal between John Woolf and Fred Zinnemann, the other being an adaptation of the play Abelard and Heloise by Ronald Millar.
Universal Studios initially wanted to cast a major American actor as the Jackal, with Robert Redford and Jack Nicholson flown to Europe to audition. Although Universal favoured Nicholson, Zinnemann ultimately secured a production agreement stipulating that only European actors would be cast. Afterwards, British actors David McCallum, Ian Richardson and Michael York were considered, before Zinnemann cast Edward Fox. Jacqueline Bisset was offered the role of Denise, but had to decline due to scheduling conflicts.
The Day of the Jackal was filmed in studios and on location in France, Britain, Italy and Austria. Zinnemann was able to film in locations usually denied to filmmakers — such as inside the Ministry of the Interior — due in large part to French producer Julien Derode's skill in dealing with authorities. Nevertheless, the opening sequence was not shot in the Élysée Palace courtyard but at the Hôtel de Soubise, the main office of the French National Archives. The two palaces were both built at the beginning of the 18th century, but the Hôtel de Soubise is more accessible and has less security than the Élysée.
To lend a documentary-like authenticity to the final Liberation Day sequence, the film company obtained permission to use hand-held cameras inside police lines at the annual Fourteenth of July Bastille Day military parade down the Champs-Élysées. Viewers of The Day of the Jackal see extraordinary closeup footage of the massing of troops, tanks, and artillery. Since the Liberation Day sequence was filmed during a real parade, it led to confusion; the crowd (many of whom were unaware that a film was being shot) mistook the actors portraying police officers for real officers, and many tried to help them arrest the "suspects" they were apprehending in the crowd. Zinnemann wrote that Adrien Cayla-Legrand, the actor who played de Gaulle, was mistaken by several Parisians for the real de Gaulle — though the former French president had been dead for nearly two years prior to film production.
During the weekend of 15 August 1972, the Paris police cleared a very busy square of all traffic to film additional scenes.
Frederick Forsyth later wrote that for the film company to buy rights for his novel, he was offered two contract options: £20,000 for outright sale of the novel in perpetuity, or £17,500 plus a small percentage of the film's net profits. He took the £20,000, noting that such a payment was already a massive sum to him at the time, but due to his naïveté about finances, he waived rights to considerably more money given the film's enduring success.
List of locations
LocationSequence 150 Rue de Rennes, Paris 6, France Assassination sequence Archives nationales, Hôtel de Soubise, 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, Paris 3As the Élysée Palace Boulevard de la Reine, Versailles, FranceBank, as "Banque de Grenoble", in fact, a savings bank Boulevard Marguerite-de-Rochechouart, Montmartre, Paris, FranceMasked robbers flee in getaway car Boulevard des Batignolles, Paris 17OAS contacts Denise Boulogne Studios, avenue Jean-Baptiste Clément, Boulogne-Billancourt, France StudioBritish Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London, EnglandThe Jackal reads Le Figaro Champs-Élysées, Paris 8Military parade Château du Saussay, Ballancourt-sur-Essonne, Essonne, France Madame Colette de Montpellier's chateau Entrevaux, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, FranceThe Jackal drives by toward Paris French Riviera, Alpes-Maritimes, France Gare d'Austerlitz, Place Valhubert, Quai d'Austerlitz, Paris 13 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London Hôtel de Beauveau, Place Beauvau, Paris 8Ministry of InteriorHotel Colombia, Genoa, Liguria, Italy Hotel Negresco, 37 Promenade des Anglais, Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France Jackal learns that his cover is blown Imperia, Liguria, Italy La Bastide de Tourtour, Tourtour, Var, France Hotel where the Jackal meets ColetteLimousin, France Piazza San Silvestro, RomeWolenski in the real central Post Office Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England StudioPlace Charles Michels, Paris 15Van attacked Place du 18 juin 1940, Paris 6 Final assassination sequence Place Vauban, Paris 7 Biker stops to place phone call Prater Park, Vienna, Austria "Pension Kleist", Rendezvous with OAS heads Quai d'Austerlitz, Paris 13 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris Outside the Palais de l'Élysée Rue de Monttessuy, Paris 7 Robbers blow up bank security van Scotland Yard, Whitehall, London UK police Somerset House, Strand, London The Jackal obtains a birth certificateSt. James's Park, London St. Mary's Church, Farnham Royal, England "St Marks, Sambourne Fishley", the Jackal finds Duggan's gravestone Ventimiglia, Liguria, Italy Before crossing the border into France Veynes, Hautes-Alpes, France Train station, as Tulle station Via di Panico, Rome Kidnapping of Wolenski Via Stefano Dondero, Genoa Garage under railway line Victoria Embankment, Westminster, London UK police
Reception
Critical response
The film holds a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 35 reviews with an average rating of 8.1/10. The critics consensus reads, "The Day of the Jackal is a meticulously constructed thriller with surprising irreverence and taut direction." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews
Critics of the period were generally impressed with the film. Among those was Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who gave it his highest rating of four stars:
Ebert concluded: "Zinnemann has mastered every detail ... There are some words you hesitate to use in a review, because they sound so much like advertising copy, but in this case I can truthfully say that the movie is spellbinding." Ebert included the film at No. 7 on his list of the Top 10 films of 1973.
The Time film critic applauded the transition from novel to film:
The review continued, that due to the talents of director Fred Zinnemann, "what might have been just another expensive entertainment becomes, on a technical level, a textbook on reels in the near-forgotten subject of concise moviemaking. In short, as so often happens, a second-rate fiction has been transformed into a first-rate screen entertainment."
A few critics were less effusive. For example, William B. Collins wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
In a MacLeans Magazine review, John Hofsess wrote: Hofsess added that it is "an authentically detailed suspense story with ingenious twists." Other critics used similar language, praising The Day of the Jackal as an intricate and detailed maze, entertaining and never tedious.