I think we're immersed enough in the text that is Where Eagles Dare by the time the bullets are flying and the explosions are going off; where brains and bravery were key in getting into a heavily fortified base within the piece, the ability to be a dab-hand with a machine gun is all that matters for the film's final third in getting out. But Where Eagles Dare understands explosions, war and wall-to-wall action is only ever effective if those involved within are people we care for; usually, the whole approach to action film-making in providing us with dozens of nameless, faceless, armed to the teeth bad guys whom act as nothing more than cannon fodder to the viewer's favourite actor whom can spend an hour or so shooting up, bores me to tears. Where other such films die on arrival, Where Eagles Dare maintains a sense of interest and peril, predominately because it has an air of film-making about it and this is actually evident long before it has submitted to a forty year premature approach of pertaining to resemble one of those many soulless, first person shooter video games that subscribe to the above aesthetic of anonymous, token bad-guys.
The film will begin with an opening shot of a large and intimidating mountain range which towers over everything, setting the scene for the predominant locale of the film and establishing the predominant traits in that sense of both coldness and of the unforgiving the film has. In an aeroplane, a squad sits dressed as Nazi German soldiers; the two key players of whom are Clint Eastwood's American Lieutenant Morris Schaffer and Richard Burton's English Major, whom sports a playfully inconspicuous name in the form of Jonathan Smith, in a film all about falsities and identity ambiguities. The film's games linked to these very points are announced shortly after this, when a flashback in a debriefing room sees a bunch of officials provide us with the necessary exposition detailing the mission these guys are on. As it turns out, they're only dressed as German soldiers and the aforementioned falsities in identity, albeit in a very basic manner, become ominously clear from an early stage. When the team arrive for the reasons they're there, Smith speaks on a radio without informing Schaffer; later entering a small cabin they've holed up in whilst still in a white, but more importantly, blank uniform as the American sits opposite still clad as a Nazi. Whilst he isn't German in any way, Schaffer's clothing at least suggests a kind of identity whereas Smith's blank outfit, as the camera zooms in on his radio hidden in a pack as the scene terminates, suggests ambiguity and an identify that isn't as clear-cut.
The film is a 1968 co-production between The United States and Great Britain; Eastwood's cold, gruff and expressionless Yank action-man taking the predominant role of being there so as to shoot everybody up when the time comes with Burton's British character, with his smarts, is there so as to provide all the complicated talk which furthers what comes across as complicated narrative twists. In eerily foreshadowing what makes so many contemporary action films so bad, the film might be read into as a systematic foreshadowing of basic chief contemporary British and American attitudes to film-making, albeit in a very crude sense. Namely, a Briton resembling the more methodical and straight talking item to proceedings with the American making hey in spectacle and action. Granted, the film was made several years before Jaws began the unfortunate cycle we now associate with American cinema or the American action-come-espionage genre, but it is difficult to shake the respective auras towards either character and their nationalities within Where Eagles Dare.
Everything leading up to the infiltrating of a large castle in the Alpine mountains of Germany, in actuality named The Eagle's Castle, is intricate; slow burning and really effective. Time is taken to find said cabin; find the castle; spy on the grounds of it; meet with some undercover allies; the task of scoping out the surroundings of the local town located nearby and the eventual entry to the castle. They're there to rescue a top military official whom its thought has some important details related to a top secret operation, director Brian G. Hutton applying by way of both Alistair MacLean's screenplay and novel an effective race against time scenario meaning the leads need to get on with it before he talks. Here is a film in which the characters most certainly shoot their way out but, if anything, do the polar opposite on entry; Burton's calm and methodical approach getting them in to the suited filmic atmosphere, and when the alarm is raised, Eastwood's Major is on hand to all but win the war individually as they strive to get away with, again, the film changing tracts at this point.
The film's centrepiece is this bizarre exchange in a lavish, fire-side dining hall in which, during a film low on overall narrative anyway, suddenly smacks us over the head with a flurry of exposition linked to double agents, mistaken identity and plot which catches us somewhat off guard as everybody stands around dressed in mostly the same uniform. As we strain to work out what just unfolded, we're plunged into a series of tense shootouts and standoffs as the exiting of the castle is given similar methodical detail only with an action sheen; systematically asked to weigh up what we now feel about certain characters given the revelations, Eastwood's own blurry eyed confusion to proceedings aiding in our association with him, fittingly, as the film moves towards a finale more geared towards action. The film is rather enthralling for the best part, Hutton and MacLean know you cannot shoot your way in and sneak your way out but there is tension, enough drama and plot where there initially appears to be no plot to keep one rather engaged.
