The Day of the Jackal (1973 film)
| The Day of the Jackal | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Fred Zinnemann |
| Produced by | John Woolf |
| Screenplay by | Kenneth Ross |
| Based on |
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Jean Tournier |
| Edited by | Ralph Kemplen |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
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Release date
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16 May 1973 |
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Running time
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145 minutes |
| Country |
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| Language | English |
| Box office | $16,056,255 |
The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 British-French political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michel Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal 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.
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, two Golden Globe Award nominations, and one Academy Award nomination. The film grossed $16,056,255 at the box office, and earned an additional $8,525,000 in North American rentals. The British Film Institute ranked it the 74th greatest British film of the 20th century.
On 22 August 1962, an assassination attempt is made on the President General Charles de Gaulle by the militant French underground organisation OAS in anger over the French government granting independence to Algeria. As the president's motorcade passes, de Gaulle's unarmoured Citroën DS car is raked with machine-gun fire, but the entire entourage escapes without injury. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several other members of the plot are captured, and Bastien-Thiry is executed.
The remaining OAS leaders, now exiled in Vienna, decide to make another attempt, and hire a professional British assassin, who chooses the code name "Jackal". They order several bank robberies to pay his fee: $500,000. Meanwhile, the Jackal travels to Genoa and commissions a custom-made rifle and fake identity papers. He kills the forger when the man tries to blackmail him. In Paris, he sneaks an impression of the key to a flat that overlooks the Place du 18 juin 1940.
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