Comment

Nov 09, 2018loella rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Fred Zinnemann's penultimate feature essays a documentary style to follow a would-be assassin of Charles de Gaulle in 1963, when sore heads in the military wanted to get back at the general-president for "losing" Algeria to independence in 1962. Sets are all real locations, shot-length is quite short though far from Eisensteinian, color suppressed-looking, as if the film was blown-up from 16 or even 8mm, the score is minimal, and the acting nondemonstrative to a fault. While Edward Fox as the assassin--the Jackal--is all surface, as one imagines such a man would have to be, Michael Lonsdale as the police deputy commissioner charged with apprehending him quite steals the show, as the very fine physical actor he is would: he has but to shift his eyes or put a bit of spin on a phrase he speaks to communicate character. Even he, however, and Delphine Seyrig in the cameo role of the ill-fated comtesse that the Jackal seduces and discards with prejudice, so to speak, don't prevent the overall grayness of the film. Suspense becomes very muted, indeed. What Roger Ebert once declared was a "spellbinder" now seems more of an exercise well done. --Ray Olson