The Eagle Has Landed (1976) on Netflix
PG19762h 15mAdventureDramaThriller
German intelligence officer Max Radl plans a raid to abduct Winston Churchill from a Norfolk village. Colonel Kurt Steiner and his paratroopers are chosen, and IRA man Liam Devlin is sent ahead.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.9/1027,629 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes71%
Trailer
Plot summary
After the Gran Sasso raid frees Mussolini, Adolf Hitler orders Admiral Wilhelm Canaris to examine whether Winston Churchill can be seized the same way. The study falls to Max Radl, a German intelligence officer, who learns that Churchill is expected at a country house near Studley Constable, a village in Norfolk. A sleeper agent, Joanna Grey, lives there already, and Radl recruits Liam Devlin, an IRA man, to reach her and prepare for the arrival. For the raid he wants Luftwaffe colonel Kurt Steiner and his Fallschirmjäger, then held in a penal unit on Alderney after helping a Jewish girl flee the SS. Himmler gives Radl a letter said to authorize the operation, and the men fly to England disguised as Polish paratroopers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Richard Harris was in line to play Devlin, but his comments in support of the IRA and his attendance at an IRA fundraising event in America embroiled him in scandal and drew threats to the film's producers, so he was removed from the production and Donald Sutherland was given the role instead.
- Michael Caine was originally offered the part of Devlin, but he did not want to play a member of the IRA, so he asked if he could have the role of Steiner instead.
- The New York Times reported in March 1976 that David Bowie was set to play a German Nazi officer in the film, contingent on whether his schedule could be worked out.
- Jack Higgins had doubted whether anyone would be interested in making a film of his 1975 bestseller because its protagonists were German soldiers. He was amazed that the rights were not only sold within a fortnight, but also that the film was brought to production so swiftly.
- During shooting Sturges told Caine that he only worked to earn enough money to go fishing. Caine wrote later that the moment the picture finished Sturges took the money and went, and that producer Jack Wiener told him Sturges never came back for the editing or any of the other post-production sessions.
- The fictional village of Studley Constable was largely filmed at Mapledurham in Oxfordshire, using the village church, Mapledurham Watermill and Mapledurham House as the manor house. A fake water wheel was added to the 15th-century structure for the film.
