15 Comments

It’s a sensational film, taut, tense, hard-edged and brilliantly acted. Sinden and Brittan are superb as the Scotland Yard detectives.

“Commissioner, how did you know whose phone to tap?”

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"$500,000? Considering you expect to get France in return, I'd have thought it a reasonable price..."

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I mean he has a point. There’s an element of Dr Evil’s “one meeeeellion pounds”. They want the president assassinated. That’s always going to cost, otherwise everyone would be organising coups.

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Mais, oui.

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You are efficiently working your way through my list of favourite films! I haven't seen this for ages.. but do I remember a sinister scene in a forest practising shooting water melons?

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Very much so. A forest in Provence. Last shot- melon exploding. Can never get my head round why he's only given five bullets. He uses up three to calibrate the rifle. We share similar tastes...

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One of the all-time greats.

Edward Fox is great. Hard, silent, focused, professional.

The tryst with Delphine Seyrig -- mature, humorless, dourly dressed, but still very sexy --is an odd detour, but it is in the book as well. The Jackal apparently has his human weaknesses, as we all do.

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Yes, but isn’t he also using her? It’s the perfect hideout.

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Maybe so. He does manage to NOT be in the room where he is registered, so maybe that gives him some time to escape if the cops show up. But, everything else is so meticulously planned, and that episode is clearly extemporized, more clearly in the book. But, yes, there may be some calculation there. It's been a long time since I have watched the whole movie.

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Magnificent film I must watch again.

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It's a brilliant film. Edward Fox perfectly cast... ruthless and as hard as nails.

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Let's not forget a young Derek Jacobi and Alan Badel as The Minister. Tres charmant!

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A favourite film.

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The anachronisms, 1961 to 1973, used to bother me, but I've got over myself these days and, like you, the last time I saw it I just saw it as a darned good thriller. Paris looks great in this, flares aside, all very stylish. As with the book it really doesn't matter that De Gaulle lives the plot is still based on fact (up to a point!).

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Funnily enough, thinking about it, I rather like the 60s/70s hybrid.... adds that extra dimension.

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