“Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy.
Over.”
We quoted this as kids in the playground of Highfield School
in Blackpool in 1968, after we had seen Where
Eagles Dare. Our kids can quote it because we made them watch Where Eagles Dare when they were kids
and when our kids are adults they will make their
kids watch it and they will be able to quote it, and it will go on in
perpetuity because it just sounds so
great when it trips off the tongue. Even people who have never seen Where Eagles Dare can quote it because
they have it as a ringtone on their mobile phones.
Richard Burton with his deep, resonant voice will be forever
remembered for this, the most famous call-sign in movie history. He’ll probably
be remembered more for this one quote than for his masterly reading of Dylan
Thomas’ Under Milk Wood or his
narrator in Jeff Wayne’s musical adaptation of War of the Worlds.
When I walked out of the cinema in 1968 after seeing what had
probably been the longest and most exciting film in the history of long and exciting
films it felt like I was walking on air. All my friends – the boys, anyway –
felt exactly the same, and when we were off school we would attach two empty
cans to a length of string, stretch it tight and say, “Broadsword calling Danny
Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy,” to each other over and over and over again.
We never got tired of saying it – it was like a magic charm.
Where Eagles Dare isn’t perfect though, and over the
years and the countless times I’ve watched it I have noticed that it is
littered with mistakes. Here are just five of them:
· The
helicopter in the Schlöss Adler couldn’t have been there because the Germans
didn’t own any helicopters.
·
A
vehicle explodes for no apparent reason after being pushed over a cliff.
·
The
black Gestapo uniform that Derren Nesbit wears was no longer in service.
·
The
Alpen Corps that guarded the Schlöss Adler had been disbanded in 1918.
· The
truth drug that was going to be used on the captured General wasn’t invented
until the 1950s.
So, how did this 148 minute film with hundreds of factual
errors, historical inaccuracies, anachronisms, continuity mistakes and enough
holes in the plot to fill a gruyere factory ten times over become a classic
that has been lapped up by three successive generations?
The answer is so simple that you’ll kick yourself for not
thinking of it first.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares because the pace of the film is so fast that you
hardly notice any of them. It’s a Boy’s Own fantasy of epic proportions, where
the heroes never run out of bullets and the villains couldn’t hit a barn door
at ten paces. It’s the original Men on a Mission Action Blockbuster and it has
never been bettered. Oh, and one more thing, it’s great fun to watch.
It’s a war film, a thriller and a spy story all rolled into
one. Alistair MacLean, the most popular thriller writer in the world at the
time delivered the story and screenplay in a mere six weeks after being
approached by Richard Burton because his son had wanted him to be in an action
film where he was the hero.
And wow! What an action film he delivered! It’s a tale of
double agents and triple agents, double crosses and triple crosses, explosions
and gunfire. More bullets were fired and more people were killed in Where Eagles Dare than in any other film
up to that point. As I sat, aged fourteen, wide-eyed and glued to my seat,
watching this film in the Odeon cinema in Blackpool, I was in a state of
delirium. It was the most violent film I had ever seen – and it was great! If this had been a true story
then the Second World War would have been over in a matter of weeks because in
just over two hours Clint Eastwood had single-handedly killed off three
quarters of the German Army. There must have been more dead Germans left in the
Schlöss Adler and its immediate surroundings than there were Imperial
Stormtroopers vaporised when the Death Star exploded at the end of Star Wars.
One brief, five minute flashback is all that’s given to
explain the mission and introduce the characters, but that was all that was
needed in a film that was first and foremost about killing as many of the enemy
in as many ways as humanly possible – they were stabbed, shot, strangled,
bludgeoned, run over, blown up and one was dropped from a great height
(actually, two others dropped from a great height, but one committed suicide by
jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute and the other was shot first so
technically (as they fell rather than
were dropped) they don’t fall into
the ‘dropped from a great height’ category).
Granted, the story moves along so swiftly that there’s little
time for character development. Clint Eastwood plays The Man With No Name,
except this time he’s in a uniform and he has a name. Derren Nesbit, who had up
until then made a career out of playing unpleasant, devious and untrustworthy
villains plays an unpleasant, devious and untrustworthy Gestapo officer. Ingrid
Pitt, famous for playing Hammer vampires with large breasts in low-cut dresses,
plays a British agent with large breasts in a low-cut dress. And then there was
Anton Diffring (who was usually typecast as a Nazi officer) playing a Nazi
officer.
The film, though, belongs to Richard Burton – it was written
for him and it shows. He has the most dialogue and it’s his actions that move
the story along – and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, I can’t
think of many things that would be better than spending two and a half hours in
his company – listening to that wonderful voice of his – and I have no doubt
that if he had ever been recorded reading aloud the names and addresses in a
telephone directory it would have been a cause for celebration.
There are so many other things that set this film apart –
there’s the breath-taking scenery, Ron Goodwin’s excellent score, the final
forty-five minutes of breakneck real-time action and, of course, there’s the
brilliantly choreographed fight on top of the cable car.
But it’s that call sign that everyone remembers so well.
“Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy.
Over.”
“Danny Boy to Broadsword. What’s your message? Over.”
“If you haven’t seen it, watch Where Eagles Dare now. If you have seen it – watch it again.
Broadsword out.”
