The Day of the MacGuffin

The Day of the Jackal 1973 UK/France (143 minutes) directed by Fred Zinnemann; screenplay by Kenneth Ross, based on Frederick Forsythe’s 1971 novel of the same title.

The Day of the Jackal is a taut political thriller in short declarative sentences.

This fast-paced 1973 Fred Zinnemann film derives from a bestselling thriller by British journalist Frederick Forsythe. It is shot in a semi-documentary style on location in Paris. It follows one of several plots by a right-wing French Army faction to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s.

The army faction called itself the Organisation armée secrète (OAS). The OAS believed that de Gaulle, the national hero of the Second World War, had betrayed the army by ‘giving in’ to Algerian demands for independence after the country passed a referendum for self-determination in January 1961. Still sore from its loss in Vietnam, the army had been fighting a bitter counterinsurgency war in Algeria since 1954 to keep Algeria French. The OAS were serious, highly-trained professionals on a mission.

The point is not whether plot succeeds: de Gaulle died of old age in 1970. The drama centers on Police Inspector Claude Lebel (Michael Lonsdale), the Paris policeman tasked from on high to catch the assassin known by his codename ‘Chacal’ (Edward Fox), believed to be days away from an assassination attempt on the French president. The casting choices could not have been better. Lebel, aided by his assistant Caron (Derek Jacobi), is a gruff, down-to-earth city police detective, middle-aged and matter-of-fact in contrast to higher-level government officials—a French cop to the fingertips. Chacal, the French for ‘jackal’, supposedly a British ex-military contract killer, is all business, despite his slight build, ascots and breezy manner.

The casting, locations and seamless use of actual footage give this story a documentary-like feel, from the tall, distinguished elderly man (Adrien Cayla-Legrand) seen only at a distance, whose frame (de Gaulle was 6 feet, 5 inches, or 196cm tall) and large nose give him the famous de Gaulle profile, to the National Archives’ Hôtel Soubise standing in as the Élysée Palace, complete with a line of official black Citroën DSes. 

The opening scene reenacts a 1962 assassination attempt on de Gaulle. A team of ex-paratroopers led by Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry (Jean Sorel) tries to kill de Gaulle in a roadside ambush in the southwest Paris suburb of Le Petit-Clamart. Using automatic weapons, the team practically shoots the president’s profile in the rear of a black Citroën DS—140 shots fired in seven seconds, we are told—but miss both Le President and his wife. Bastien-Thiry was captured and executed.

The OAS then interviews and selects Charles Harold Calthrop (Fox), from their short list. We are told that Calthrop, ‘a commercial representative for a small armaments firm,’ successfully assassinated General Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, in 1961 (this happened but evidently was a local affair), as well as a political figure in the Congo (Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was murdered in the newly-independent Congo's Katanga Province in early 1961). Colonel Rodin (Eric Porter) agrees to pay Calthrop the $500,000 he demands to do the job: half in advance, half on fulfillment. Calthorp tells these men to refer to him as ‘Chacal’. He gives them a contact number through which to route messages.

 

 ‘I’d like to know how you expect us to find half a million dollars so quickly?’ asks one of the conspirators.

‘Use your network. Rob some banks,’ Calthrop replies.

We see Calthrop select the name ‘Paul Oliver Duggan’ from an infant’s grave in a rural English parish church graveyard. Calthrop takes this name to obtain a passport to travel to Genoa to set up the job by acquiring a specially-designed sniper’s rifle and more false documents, and then to scout the site in Paris. Calthrop also boosts the passport of a Danish man of his size and build at a British airport.

The MacGuffin—a spurious narrative detail which sidetracks the viewer’s attention rather than serve as the plot point it purports to be—is the detailed length to which Calthrop goes to hide his identity. He gives himself the codename ‘Chacal’ which, a British Foreign Office official later points out, combines the first three letters respectively of Charles and Calthrop. But he could be anyone. Apart from images on various identification documents, 'Chacal' is a cipher. He also is a polished professional, whether as Calthrop, Chacal, Duggan, ‘a fair-haired young foreigner with two suitcases,’ Per Lundquist the gay Danish schoolteacher, or André Martin the one-legged French war veteran.

We watch as Chacal leads Lebel on a chase across France shedding identities and leaving bodies. We know that Chacal does not kill de Gaulle. But we do not know whether this is because something happens to Chacal or his mission, or because Lebel foils the plot within the few days, hours, or even moments before one of de Gaulle’s three public appearances on Liberation Day on 25 August 1963.