The translation of an intricate novel to the big screen isn’t usually a winner. The best exception is the original “The Day of the Jackal” (click here to read my review) and it is the gold standard in this genre. However, Clint Eastwood’s “The Eiger Sanction” from 1975 in which he directed and starred, manages to do a solid job of culling the best from Trevanian’s best-seller of the same title from 1972. The key in any translation is to get rid of entire subplots, or whittle them down to a few lines of dialogue, without spoiling the best parts of a novel. Eastwood does a good job of this and the acting isn’t too bad, either.
‘The Eiger Sanction’
(1975; 129 minutes; rated R; directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee and Jack Cassidy)
AN ASSASSIN AND A MOUNTAIN: WHICH WILL WIN?
It is next to impossible to do a great translation of a novel or non-fiction work to the big screen, but Clint Eastwood does a solid job with “The Eiger Sanction,” which is the story of a professor-mountain climber-assassin doing a final assignment for both financial and personal reasons.
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Two of the best translations from a novel to the big screen are “The Godfather(s)” from Mario Puzo’s best-seller and the original “The Day of the Jackal” (click here to read my review) from Frederick Forsyth. Both are excellent examples of filmmakers being able to translate hundreds of pages in about two hours on screen. It’s nowhere near an easy job and too many times it’s an exercise in futility.
However, “The Eiger Sanction” is not a futile effort. It’s not perfect, but it does a good job and can be classified as a “real” motion picture and not just something from which filmmakers made a dollar off a best-seller’s public relations.
In “The Eiger Sanction,” Eastwood, who also directed the film, is a college art professor with a taste for collecting masterpieces and has paid for his purchases by working as an assassin for a CIA-type organization called “CII” or “C2.” At the start of the film, Eastwood is retired and not interested in any more assignments.
However, he’s drawn back and double-crossed in through the need for cash and personal reasons – one of his best friends is killed on the job and another has taken a hand in it … and that is a friend who betrayed Eastwood previously and Clint wants a piece of his hide. Seduction also plays a major role in the story.
It all comes together in “The Eiger Sanction” through a mountain climbing adventure to the North Face of the mountain called the Eiger in Switzerland. It is a dangerous climb that Eastwood had nearly been killed on twice before. His target is supposed to be one of the other climbers, but the specific person is not known and Eastwood is supposed to identify him and then eliminate him.
I’ll leave it to you to experience and enjoy the eddies and currents of the story, which is nicely refined from the intricacies of the author’s work. Here’s a look at the primary cast …
A four-time Oscar winner and seven-time nominee and five-time Golden Globe winner and seven-time nominee, Eastwood does his typical work in this one: He’s solid, strong and gets off a few good one-liners. The best part of Eastwood’s acting is how he makes each of his characters a real person. Watching him on screen, he makes you believe the character is real and you might meet him on the street. My favorite movie with Eastwood is “Kelly’s Heroes” (click here to read my review) and my favorite Western is his magnificent “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (click here to read my review). My second-favorite war movie with Clint is “Where Eagles Dare” with Richard Burton (click here to read my review). You can click here for Eastwood’s complete awards list … or you can click here for his complete CV …- An Oscar winner and two-time Golden Globe nominee (not for this one), George Kennedy plays “Ben Bowman” and is Eastwood’s friend and former mountain-climbing buddy. Kennedy does a nice job of conveying the convivial character of “Ben” and it’s especially solid because there’s more to the character than first meets the eye. I especially enjoyed his work in the “Naked Gun” franchise and he won his Oscar for “Cool Hand Luke” with Paul Newman and was nominated for Globes for it and “Airport.” Like Eastwood, Kennedy had an impressive CV of great films and you can review his career by clicking here. He died at 91 in 2016.
Vonetta McGee plays “Jemima ‘Jem’ Brown” (yes, “Jemima!”) and she turns out to be part of the intrigue game, too. McGee does a very solid job of conveying her character and manages to elevate it – and that’s tough to do in a film. The interracial aspect of Eastwood and McGee being “together” was a bit cavalier for a mainstream film in 1975 and it was handled well for the time. McGee had a career of varied roles in film and on television, including episodes of “A. Law,” “Magnum P.I.” and “Starsky and Hutch.” McGee was in films such as “Shaft in Africa,” “Blacula” and “Johnny B Good.” She notched 42 acting credits spanning five decades from the first in 1968 to the last in 2007. McGee died of a heart attack at 65 in 2010.- Gregory Walcott plays “Pope” (the character’s full name was “Clement Pope” in the novel) and he’s the blundering, blustering, self-important incompetent link between CII and Eastwood. He does a solid job of convincing you he’s stupid, uninspired and ignorant. Walcott worked on several Eastwood films including “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” and Clint smacked him with a fish in “Every Which Way but Loose” (click here to read my review). A native of North Carolina, Walcott died at 87 in 2015.
A two-time Primetime Emmy nominee, Jack Cassidy plays the smooth and suave “Miles Mellough,” who’s on Clint’s personal eliminate list. The character is a homosexual and while Cassidy’s characterization is somewhat stereotypical of the age, it’s not as awful as others from the same era. Cassidy does the best job from a character in the supporting cast in his dealings with Eastwood, but shows none of the personal toughness that the character had in the novel. Cassidy was nominated for the TV movie “The Andersonville Trial” and the TV series “He & She” with Paula Prentiss and Richard Benjamin. Tragically, Cassidy died at 49 in a house fire in 1976 after he fell asleep on a couch and his cigarette set it on fire.- Thayer David plays “Dragon” (the character’s full name was “Yurasis Dragon” in the novel) and he’s an albino who’s the director of CII and a former Nazi – remember the film was in 1975, only 30 years past World War II. David takes glee in his cruelty and manipulation of Eastwood and since is character cannot withstand direct light, their scenes are pretty much in darkness that lends the perfect malevolence to “Dragon.” It was a solid performance from him. David was also in “Rocky,” “Little Big Man,” and “Save the Tiger” with Jack Lemmon, but most of his career was on television including episodes on “Hawaii Five-O,” “Columbo” and the miniseries “Roots.” He died of a heart attack at 51 in 1978.
I’m not going to take time to look individually at the other climbers or the wife of one climber who does the randy-bit to make a cuckold of her husband or some peripheral characters such as Cassidy’s bodyguard who gets his clock cleaned by Eastwood at Kennedy’s resort.
Eastwood does a solid job behind the camera in “The Eiger Sanction” and the movie is well-paced and never leaves you hanging for a moment. Along with the action scenes, you get a decent motion picture from a storytelling point-of-view and it has some depth – the acting isn’t just some crappy segue to the next action scene and the climax and the full story of Eastwood’s character’s betrayal did not come in obvious fashion.
The author of the novel “The Eiger Sanction” was Trevanian, whose birth name was Rodney William Whitaker, and who died in 2005. He always hated the treatment of the novel in going to film (but I’m sure he still spent the money he received for it) because a climber died in a stunt accident early in the filming. He even wrote about his displeasure in a subsequent novel (and a sequel novel to “The Eiger Sanction” featured the character of “Dr. Hemlock”).
“The Eiger Sanction” was the 24th ranked film at the U.S. box office in 1975 with $14.1 million in ticket sales, according to the online site The Numbers. It was a tough year for box office competition with “Jaws” being No. 1 with $260 million; at No. 2 was “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” with $108.9 million; and at No. 3 was “Shampoo” with $49.4. Since it is the internet, a variety of sources put “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” in at No. 2 or as far down as No.7. Ah well, no one ever said the internet was perfect (or accurate, for that matter). Here are the films from 1975 that I’ve reviewed for my blog:
- “The Killer Elite” (not Peckinpah’s best) – click here for my review
- “Murph the Surf” (neat little crime flick) – click here for my review
- “Rollerball” (classic sci-fi flick) – click here for my review
- “Three Days of the Condor” (Redford’s spy classic) – click here for my review
Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):
Thayer David’s birth name was David Thayer Hersey; Walcott’s birth name was Bernard Wasdon Mattox and his nickname was “Barnyard;” Jean-Pierre Bernard, who played on the of the mountain climbers, had a birth name of Jean-Pierre Guive Brodkorb;- Cassidy was married to Shirley “The Partridge Family” Jones and his children included entertainers David Cassidy and Shaun Cassidy.
- Forget the micro-men of Hollywood standing at 5-foot-5, Eastwood stands and Kennedy and Walcott stood at 6-foot-4.
- Candice Rialson, who made a mark by being in a number of “exploitation films” such as “Candy Stripe Nurses” and “Summer School Teachers,” plays “Art Student,” who fails to seduce Eastwood for an improved grade in his art class. Rialson died at 54 of liver disease in 2006.
- Eastwood did nearly all the stunts involving his character.
- The film was originally developed for Paul Newman.
- Directly from IMDb.com: “This is the only movie that John Williams has scored for Clint Eastwood. He was suggested by the studio and producers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, after Jaws (1975), and because Williams knew that Eastwood was a huge fan of jazz. He did incorporate that style into his score, which also featured a classical, more traditional orchestral sound.”
- Because of lack of visibility from dust stirred up in a chase scene, Cassidy asked for a stunt double to sit for him in the passenger’s seat instead of riding himself.
- Directly from IMDb.com: “At the 7:20 mark a student in Hemlock’s class can be seen wearing a Oakland Tech shirt. Clint Eastwood graduated from Oakland Technical High School in Oakland California.”
- Novelist Trevanian, who had a PhD from Northwestern, showed his academic love for being called “doctor” with the character of “Hemlock” … an art professor who is called “Dr. Hemlock.” Academics with PhDs enjoy being called “doctor,” even though they do not have a medical degree.
- Kennedy won two Bronze Star medals for combat while serving with Gen. George Patton’s army group during World War II.
- Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “This shoot marked the last time that anyone was legally allowed to climb the ‘Totem Pole’ in Monument Valley, Arizona. In return for permission to film there, climbers with the production had to remove all of the pitons, which had accumulated from years of climbing, on their way down. Since that time a number of illegal ascents have been made, as climbing within the tribal park is prohibited by the Navajo Council”
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