# The Day of the Jackal (film)

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.
A co-production of the United Kingdom and France, the film stars Edward Fox as the Jackal, 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.
The Day of the Jackal received positive reviews and went on to win the BAFTA Award for Best Editing (Ralph Kemplen), five additional BAFTA Award 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. The British Film Institute ranked it the 74th greatest British film of the 20th century.
A TV adaptation of the novel and film was released in 2024.

## Plot

On 22 August 1962, the militant underground organisation OAS, infuriated by the French government granting independence to Algeria, attempts to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle. The assassination attempt fails, leaving de Gaulle and his entire entourage unharmed. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several other members are captured and Bastien-Thiry is executed. This historical event provides the context for the film's fictional plot.
The remaining OAS leaders, now hiding in Austria, plan another attempt, and hire a British assassin, credited with the assassination of Rafael Trujillo, who goes by the code name "Jackal". Due to the dangerous nature of targeting de Gaulle, the Jackal demands $500,000 since he must retire for good afterwards to hide from the French Government. The OAS reluctantly agree with the price and use their network to rob several banks to afford the payment. The Jackal travels to Genoa and commissions a custom rifle from a gunsmith, and fake identity papers from a forger, whom the Jackal kills when the criminal unwisely tries blackmailing him. In Paris, the Jackal duplicates a key to a sixth-floor flat overlooking the Place du 18 Juin 1940 at Boulevard du Montparnasse.
The OAS relocate to Rome. The French Action Service kidnap the OAS's chief clerk, Viktor Wolenski. Wolenski dies under interrogation, but not before the agents extract vital information about the plot, including the word "Jackal". The Interior Minister convenes a secret cabinet meeting of the heads of the French security forces. (The Minister is anonymous in the film: the actual Minister at the period was Roger Frey.) Police Commissioner Berthier recommends his deputy, Claude Lebel, to lead the investigation. Lebel is given special emergency powers, though de Gaulle's refusal to change his planned public appearances complicates matters.
Colonel St. Clair, a personal military aide to de Gaulle and a cabinet member, carelessly discloses classified government information to his mistress, Denise, unaware she is an OAS agent. She passes this on to her contact, who, in turn, aids the Jackal. Meanwhile, Lebel determines that British suspect Charles Harold Calthrop (whose name Cha… Cal… suggests chacal, French for jackal) may be travelling under the name Paul Oliver Duggan, who died as a child, and has entered France.
Although the Jackal learns the authorities have uncovered the assassination plot, he decides to proceed. While at a hotel, the Jackal meets and seduces the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier. Warned by his contact, the Jackal leaves just before Lebel and his men arrive. After a nearly fatal vehicular accident, the Jackal steals a car and drives to Madame de Montpellier's country estate to hide out. He kills her when she reveals the police have already spoken to her. Using a previously stolen passport, the Jackal then assumes the identity of a bespectacled Danish schoolteacher named Per Lundquist. After disposing of Duggan's belongings in a river, he catches a train for Paris.
Madame de Montpellier's body is discovered and her car is recovered at the railway station. Lebel, no longer hindered by secrecy restrictions, launches a public manhunt. The Jackal allows himself to be picked up by a gay man at a Turkish bathhouse and stays at the man's flat. The Jackal kills him after the man sees a TV news broadcast that "Lundquist" is wanted for the murder of Madame de Montpellier.
At a meeting with the Interior Minister's cabinet, Lebel says he believes the Jackal will attempt to shoot de Gaulle during the commemoration of the liberation of Paris during World War II, scheduled three days hence. Lebel plays a recording of a phone call in which Denise provides information to an OAS contact. St. Clair apologises for his indiscretion and immediately leaves. When asked how he knew to wiretap specifically St. Clair's phone, Lebel says he did not know. Instead he wiretapped the phones of every present cabinet member. The French Interior Minister, feeling that the case is now solved, dismisses Lebel from the case. Denise returns to St. Clair's apartment and discovers that he has taken his own life and finds the police awaiting her. Subsequently losing track of the Jackal, the French Interior Minister reinstates Lebel because he's still needed for the manhunt.
On Liberation Day, the Jackal, disguised as André Martin (an elderly French veteran amputee), enters a building using the key he had earlier procured. In an upper apartment overlooking the ceremonial area, he assembles the rifle hidden within his crutch and waits by the window. When Lebel discovers that a policeman allowed "Martin" to pass through the security cordon, the two race to the building. As de Gaulle presents the first medal, the Jackal takes aim, but as he shoots he narrowly misses when the president suddenly leans forward to kiss the recipient's cheek. As he reloads the rifle for another shot, Lebel and the policeman burst in. The Jackal shoots the policeman, but Lebel kills him using the officer's MAT-49 submachine gun.
In England, while police are searching Charles Harold Calthrop's flat, the real Calthrop suddenly arrives. He accompanies them to Scotland Yard and is later cleared, leaving the police to wonder about the true identity of the assassin. The Jackal is buried in an unmarked grave, with Lebel as the only witness.

## Cast

* Edward Fox as the Jackal, also known as Paul Duggan, Per Lundquist, and André Martin; a British assassin hired by the OAS to kill President Charles de Gaulle
* Michael Lonsdale as Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel, the man sent to find the Jackal
* Derek Jacobi as Caron, Lebel's assistant
* Michel Auclair as Colonel Rolland, the head of the French SDECE Action Service
* Alan Badel as the French Interior Minister
* Tony Britton as Superintendent Bryn Thomas, a Metropolitan Police officer who helps uncover the Jackal's identities
* Terence Alexander as Lloyd
* Denis Carey as Andre Casson, the head of the OAS-CNR underground in mainland France
* Cyril Cusack as the Gunsmith, who crafts the Jackal's weapon to use on de Gaulle
* Maurice Denham as General Colbert
* Delphine Seyrig as Colette de Montpellier, a rich woman whom the Jackal seduces
* Jacques François as Pascal
* Olga Georges-Picot as Denise, Colonel St Clair's mistress
* Raymond Gérôme as Flavigny
* Barrie Ingham as St. Clair, a military officer and unwitting leak to the OAS and the Jackal
* Jean Martin as Viktor Wolenski, Rodin's bodyguard
* Ronald Pickup as the Forger, who creates the Jackal's fake ID
* Vernon Dobtcheff as the Interrogator
* Eric Porter as Col. Marc Rodin, the OAS operations chief
* Anton Rodgers as Jules Bernard
* Donald Sinden as Assistant Commissioner Mallinson
* Jean Sorel as Jean Bastien-Thiry, a real-life failed French Air Force assassin on President de Gaulle
* David Swift as Commandant Rene Montclair, the OAS treasurer
* Timothy West as Commissioner Berthier, the head of the French police and Lebel's superior
* Bernard Archard as Inspector Hughes
* Philippe Léotard as Paris Gendarme
* Adrien Cayla-Legrand as President Charles de Gaulle, the French head of state
* Andréa Ferréol as Hotel Staff

### Uncredited

* Edward Hardwicke as Charles Calthrop, a man who is arrested on suspicion of being the Jackal
* Howard Vernon as Minister Lévesque
* David Kernan as the real Per Lundquist, whose identity the Jackal steals as a disguise
* Féodor Atkine as an OAS gunman
* Max Faulkner as a Special Branch Inspector
* Liliane Rovère as Hotel Chambermaid
* Nicholas Young as Passport Officer

## 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 contract to buy rights for his novel, he was offered two options: £17,500 plus a small percentage of subsequent film profits, or £20,000 and no royalties. He took £20,000, noting that such a payment was already a massive sum to him, but due to his naïveté about finances, he waived rights to a small fortune in royalties given the film's enduring success.

### List of locations

| Location | Sequence |
| 150 Rue de Rennes, Paris 6, France | Assassination sequence |
| Archives nationales, Hôtel de Soubise, 60 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, Paris 3 | As the Élysée Palace |
| Boulevard de la Reine, Versailles, France | Bank, as "Banque de Grenoble", in fact, a savings bank |
| Boulevard Marguerite-de-Rochechouart, Montmartre, Paris, France | Masked robbers flee in getaway car |
| Boulevard des Batignolles, Paris 17 | OAS contacts Denise |
| Boulogne Studios, avenue Jean-Baptiste Clément, Boulogne-Billancourt, France | Studio |
| British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London, England | The Jackal reads Le Figaro |
| Champs-Élysées, Paris 8 | Military parade |
| Château du Saussay, Ballancourt-sur-Essonne, Essonne, France | Madame Colette de Montpellier's chateau |
| Entrevaux, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France | The 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 8 | Ministry of Interior |
| Hotel 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 Colette |
| Limousin, France | |
| Piazza San Silvestro, Rome | Wolenski in the real central Post Office |
| Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England | Studio |
| Place Charles Michels, Paris 15 | Van 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 certificate |
| St. 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 |
| Victoria Embankment, Westminster, London | UK police |

## Reception
### Critical response

The film holds a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 33 reviews with an average rating of 8.0/10. The critics consensus reads, "The Day of the Jackal is a meticulously constructed thriller with surprising irreverence and taut direction."
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:
   "Fred Zinnemann’s The Day of the Jackal is one hell of an exciting movie. I wasn’t prepared for how good it really is: it’s not just a suspense classic, but a beautifully executed example of filmmaking. It’s put together like a fine watch. The screenplay meticulously assembles an incredible array of material, and then Zinnemann choreographs it so that the story—complicated as it is—unfolds in almost documentary starkness. The Day of the Jackal is two and a half hours long and seems over in about fifteen minutes."
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 the year for 1973.
The Time film critic applauded the transition from novel to film:
   "The Day of the Jackal makes one appreciate anew the wonderful narrative efficiency of the movies. Frederick Forsyth's bestselling novel — essentially what mystery buffs call a police procedural, but blown up to international proportions — kept losing its basically simple storyline in the forest of words. The writer required paragraphs to detail the procedures of an international manhunt, not to mention the procedures of the Jackal himself, a hired gun employed by disaffected French army officers to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. This is the kind of material that a good director can give us in the wink of a panning camera's eye."
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:
   "The picture cuts between The Jackal, carefully making his preparations, to the police taking their counter-measures. It is all detail work and not very exciting. The pace picks up noticeably when the assassin, all preliminaries behind him, motors across the Franco-Italian border and learns that his cover has been blown."
In a MacLeans Magazine review, John Hofsess wrote:
   "The Jackal is not a great film, but it's a damn good one, one of the very few films released this year that is worth all the trouble and expense of going out to the movies. Zinnemann has a self-effacing directorial style; give him a good yarn and he tells it without any personal intrusions and attention-getting tics."
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.
Critic Matt Brunson of Film Frenzy appreciated how the film did justice to the novel it was based on:
   "Author Frederick Forsyth struck gold right out of the gate with his first fictional work, the 1971 international bestseller The Day of the Jackal, and then had the good fortune to watch it transformed into a motion picture that (unlike too many page-to-screen efforts) steadfastly avoided botching the source material. A largely faithful adaptation of Forsyth’s novel ... Fred Zinnemann, scripter Kenneth Ross, and editor Ralph Kemplen (earning this film’s sole Oscar nomination) all deserve high marks for ratcheting up the tension in a movie whose outcome is never in doubt (after all, de Gaulle died years later at home, at the age of 79)."
Likewise, the film critic for The Spectator opined:
   "All of this the cinema is properly and effectively equipped to handle. Zinnemann, with the help of an excellent script from Kenneth Ross, has transferred the novel lock, stock, barrel and silencer to the screen. Nothing important has been left out. The added visual dimension means that Forsyth's lengthy descriptions of the Jackal's movements and equipment can be quickly expanded, and the extensive location shooting brings out the documentary aspect of the story to the full.... In other words, for those of you who have read the novel, going to The Day of the Jackal will be curiously like the experience of seeing the same film a second time round or seeing the filmed version of a stage play. For anyone who hasn't read Forsyth's book, the film can be recommended wholeheartedly."
As Empire magazine observed, Forsyth's scrupulously researched "pulp thriller" provided "the perfect template for this exhaustive procedural. In many ways, this outstanding piece of filmmaking marks the apotheosis of a certain style of thriller that has since fallen out of fashion—the mind game. [It is] built with the minutiae of a Swiss watch", without blandishments. The linear plot "is made infinitely complex by the portrayal of this empty vessel of a killer by Fox..." An irresistible force is pitted against an immovable object — a conflict facilitated by the script. TV Guide noted, "We watch his [the Jackal's] preparations which are so thorough we wonder how he could possibly fail even as we watch the French police attempt to pick up his trail."
Gannett news service critic Bernard Drew had both compliments and criticisms: "This is not a bad movie, it races by and entertains, after a fashion. It simply is not as good as it should have been. One wonders what Hitchcock or Costa-Gavras would have done with it. They would have cast it differently, cut down on the elaborate detailing, so much of which comes down to nothing, and the huge dramatis personae, and possibly might have made a better movie—more humorous, passionate, and credible—and then again, quite possibly not."
The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa named The Day of the Jackal as one of his 100 favourite films.

### Box office

The movie grossed $16,056,255 at the box office, earning North American rentals of $8,525,000. Zinnemann was pleasantly surprised by the commercial results, telling an interviewer in 1993: "The idea that excited me was to make a suspense film where everybody knew the end - that de Gaulle was not killed. In spite of knowing the end, would the audience sit still? And it turned out that they did, just as the readers of the book did."

## Awards and nominations

The Day of the Jackal and the resultant Academy Award nomination were career milestones for Kenneth Ross, the Scottish-American screenwriter.
| Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
| Academy Awards, 1974 | Best Film Editing | Ralph Kemplen | Nominated |
| American Cinema Editors Awards, 1974 | Best Edited Feature Film – Dramatic | Ralph Kemplen | Nominated |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Film Editing | Ralph Kemplen | Won |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Film | The Day of the Jackal | Nominated |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Direction | Fred Zinnemann | Nominated |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Screenplay | Kenneth Ross | Nominated |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Sound Track | Nicholas Stevenson, Bob Allen | Nominated |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Supporting Actor | Michael Lonsdale | Nominated |
| BAFTA Awards, 1974 | Best Supporting Actress | Delphine Seyrig | Nominated |
| Golden Globe Awards, 1974 | Best Director | Fred Zinnemann | Nominated |
| Golden Globe Awards, 1974 | Best Motion Picture, Drama | The Day of the Jackal | Nominated |
| Golden Globe Awards, 1974 | Best Screenplay | Kenneth Ross | Nominated |

## Remakes

* August 1 (1988) - An Indian Malayalam-language film directed by Sibi Malayil, written by S. N. Swamy, and starring Mammootty, Sukumaran, Captain Raju and Urvashi. This adaptation relocates the story to the Indian state of Kerala.
* The Jackal (1997) - An American film directed by Michael Caton-Jones, written by Chuck Pfarrer, and starring Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Sidney Poitier and Diane Venora. Forsyth, Woolf, Zinnemann and Fox opposed the production and filed an injunction to prevent Universal Pictures from using the name of the original novel and film, and it would be marketed as being "inspired by" rather than directly based on Forsyth's novel. The film does not credit Forsyth's novel as source material, and only credits Kenneth Ross with "earlier screenplay."
* The Day of the Jackal (2024) - A British television drama serial adaptation of the Frederick Forsyth novel of the same name. It stars Eddie Redmayne, is produced by Ronan Bennett and directed by Brian Kirk.