What begins as a kitchen-sink drama about an immigrant mum trying to pay her taxes suddenly ends up with a rip in the time-space continuum, propelling viewers through a rocket ship trip of parallel universes and ending with a philosophical dissection of not just who we are, but who we could have been. Watch Inglourious Basterds and tell me Quentin Tarantino isn't a huge fan.įor another thing, it looks absolutely gorgeous – shot on location in Bavaria and Austria, at an actual proper castle – and the growling Eastwood and the magnificently taciturn Burton make for the kind of grim, actually not that likeable or noble double-act which you believe could, probably, blast their way into the heart of Nazi-dom and get out again. Like the New Hollywood upstarts around it like Bonnie and Clyde, Where Eagles Dare makes its killings extravagantly, almost preposterously painful. this tale of derring-do up in the German Alps did shove the war movie on from the stern-browed likes of In Which We Serve that had dominated during and immediately after the war. Broadsword calling Danny Boy, etc.īut on the other hand, it's the connoisseur's choice of World War Two adventure flicks. Eastwood and Richard Burton are tasked with liberating an American general from captivity in a mountaintop schloss in the heist to get him out, chaos ensues. If your main image of Where Eagles Dare is of Clint Eastwood gunning down hundreds of Nazis with a machine gun then yes, you'd be right in thinking that Where Eagles Dare is a very, very, very daft film with a honking script. Silver Screen Collection // Getty Images Where Eagles Dare (1968) Watch Adam Curtis's TraumaZone as a companion piece, an affecting documentary-collage showing how it felt to watch first communism and then democracy collapse in Russia. As it's out of copyright now you've got a few different versions available too, with different soundtracks – Pet Shop Boys' electronic score is a particularly good match for an appropriately future-shock feel. But in its 75 minutes the film started a revolution of its own within cinema and Eisenstein's quick, expressive editing and eye for montage still feel fresh. Nina Agadzhanova's original screenplay was, to be fair, commissioned as a piece of propaganda to celebrate the 1905 uprising on said battleship which spilled out into wider Russian society.
It was considered so inflammatory and socialist it was banned by the BBFC in 1926, and only granted an 'X' rating in 1954 after Stalin's death. Sergei Eisenstein's opus is one of the cornerstones of cinema, but for many years you couldn't see it in the UK. Universal History Archive // Getty Images
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