Eagle is a Lemon + not very original

Eagle is a Lemon & not very original

In 1942 there was an excellent British propaganda film made called Went the Day Well? (Released in the States under the title 48 Hours)

Plot Summary: A quiet English village is visited unexpectedly by a platoon of 'Royal Engineers'. When the soldiers are revealed as German troops, the villagers fight back.

Sound familiar? Went the Day Well does it much better than The Eagle Has Landed. This film tells a very chilling story; all the more so because it was actually made during the war & depicts a level of violence unheard of in any film made in the 1940’s. Ironically most of the violence is carried out not by the Germans but by the villagers once they decide to fight back.

The film is almost cruel in the way it repeatedly frustrates its audience's hopes. After the Germans' merciless extermination of the village's small platoon of home guards, the villagers make a number of attempts to summon help.

The first occurs when land girl Ivy (Thora Hird) and her friend Peggy (Elizabeth Allan) smuggle a message written on an egg to the visiting delivery boy. Almost immediately, the eggs are broken when the boy is knocked off his bike by Mrs Fraser's (Marie Lohr) visiting cousin Maud (Hilda Bayley). When Mrs Fraser slips a written message into Maud's pocket, she absent-mindedly uses the note to steady a rattling car window; it is dislodged and eaten by her dog.

Most extraordinary is a scene in which the post-mistress (Muriel George) throws pepper in the eyes of her unwelcome lodger, then finishes him off with an axe. Shortly after, when her telephone call for help is ignored by a gossiping switchboard operator, she meets her own end, on the blade of a bayonet.

There is even a scene where a child is shot in cold blood. Even in a gun crazy country like America where a gun is viewed as a symbol of freedom & democracy Hollywood has a taboo about children being killed in cold blood. In Went the Day Well, a British film made 64 years ago, an unarmed child is deliberately shot in the back. The Eagle Has Landed is weak, tame & very commercial by comparison. Went the Day Well is without question not only one of the best British propaganda films made during the second world war, it’s one of the best propaganda films ever. A must see if you can get hold of it.