7.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A professional assassin codenamed "Jackal" plots to kill Charles de Gaulle, the President of France.
Starring: Edward Fox, Terence Alexander, Michel Auclair, Alan Badel, Tony BrittonThriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: LPCM Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region B (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The sixties were a time of massive social and political upheaval, with one side development being the almost regular assassinations (or at least assassination attempts) of powerful figures. November 22, 1963 is, like Pearl Harbor’s December 7, a date which will live in infamy for anyone who was alive when President Kennedy succumbed to a killer’s bullet(s) in Dallas, and the United States saw a tragic unfolding of several murders or attempted murders in 1968 alone, with the killings of both President Kennedy’s younger brother Bobby and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But Americans were not the only nationalities experiencing this phenomenon, and kind of ironically some of the other countries suffering from assassination attempts did so under the auspices of the United States’ government, which famously (or infamously, depending on your viewpoint) tried to “excise” folks like Fidel Castro. The dedicated folks of the Central Intelligence Agency were somewhat more “successful” with regard to South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm, who was deposed in a CIA backed coup just a couple of weeks before President Kennedy’s assassination, in a CIA backed operation which quickly led to the killing of Diệm, along with his brother, when the erstwhile leaders refused to surrender peacefully. Buried (no pun intended) in all of this history is a now little remembered attempt on the life of French President Charles de Gaulle, which took place in August of 1962 under the direction of a far right reactionary group of mercenaries who banded together and called themselves the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a group that arose in the wake of the similarly little remembered (outside of France, anyway) Algerian War which France waged from 1954 until 1962. De Gaulle’s granting of Algerian independence evidently raised the hackles of members of the OAS, and they staged a rather spectacular assassination attempt that saw de Gaulle’s motorcade assaulted with a barrage of machine gun fire, all to no avail. The conspirators were quickly rounded up, with the leader meeting his fate at the hands of a firing squad. All of this OAS activity is documented in brief and appealing concise fashion in the opening moments of Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film version of Frederick Forsyth’s global best seller The Day of the Jackal, a tome which took this historical backdrop and then developed a rather intense political thriller out of a “what if” scenario that posited the OAS continuing to work for the death of de Gaulle.
The Day of the Jackal is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the transfer:
The Day of the Jackal is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with mono sound. A 35mm interpositive was sourced for the picture and a 35mm duplicate optical sound negative master was sourced for the audio. The film was remastered by NBC Universal.Taken as a whole, this is a largely very pleasing looking transfer, one with a very nice accounting of an often quite lush palette, as well as some excellent fine detail levels in things like the ribbed inside of the briefcase holding The Jackal's rifle, or even the fine downy hair on Fox's cheeks. The presentation is often quite grainy looking, as befits its source, but the one place where some videophiles may have some issues with this presentation is with regard to the rather wide variability of the grain field. It's nicely organic looking on the whole, but it swarms unexpectedly at times, for no really discernable reason (i.e., nothing like an optical is involved), something that can lead to a loss of clarity, especially in some of the darker scenes. While there are no really horrible compression anomalies on display, the thickness of the grain field and lighting conditions can occasionally present hurdles such as the one seen in screenshot 19. There's no damage of any import to report in terms of dirt, scratches or other issues.
Additional picture restoration work was performed at R3store Studios.
The Day of the Jackal features an LPCM mono track which capably supports the film's dialogue, score and effects. As an aside (and not directly pertaining to the actual sound of this track), I have to say some of the scoring choices by Georges Delerue (I assume made in tandem with Zinnemann) are on the odd side. Note (no pun intended) for example the opening sequence, where Delerue provides a really effectively spooky use of what sounds like an autoharp or maybe a hammered duclimer, along with tremolo strings. It automatically leads the viewer (and/or listener, as the case may be) to anticipate something horrible about to happen. Except — it doesn't, really. The music just stops, and then the sequence proceeds until the actual assassination attempt is made. It's just kind of a peculiar example of "spotting" (deciding where underscore should be placed). All of this said, fidelity is fine throughout, and there are no issues with distortion or dropouts.
It's frankly kind of amazing how much suspense Zinnemann is able to wring out of a tale where the conclusion is foregone. This film bristles with a rare kind of intensity, despite that fact of the audience at least subliminally knowing that the story's anti-hero is going to fail in his mission. Performances are top notch, and the location photography is superb. Arrow's release sports solid technical merits and some excellent supplements. Recommended.
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