During the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, a team of German saboteurs assume the identities of dead British soldiers and are transported to England. Their first objective is to cripple British air defences by destroying radar stations. Though the identities and whereabouts of the saboteurs are unknown, a team of British soldiers is set up to track them down and abort their mission. While the Battle of Britain rages overhead, the final confrontation takes place as the German team are about to blow up the RAF Fighter Command control centre.
Eagles Over London
When Enzo G. Castellari finished the film Kill Them All and Come Back Alone, he asked the producers what their next film would be. They replied a war epic about the Battle of Britain with the Harry Saltzman version yet to be released. Enzo thought that was a great idea but the producers had their sights on Alberto De Martino directing. The producers stipulated that stock footage of the actual Battle of Britain needed to be used in the film and that it should be used in a split-screen method. They asked Enzo if he would direct the special effects sequences and cut it with the stock footage using a split-screen method. Enzo had never heard of "split screen" so he was shown the American films The Thomas Crown Affair and The Boston Strangler. He shot the effects sequences and mixed it using a triple split screen method. An example is having a British plane shoot on the left side, having a German plane getting hit on the right side, and having stock footage in the middle. When shown this split-screen footage, the producers were so impressed they decided to have Enzo direct the entire picture. After this, Enzo sat down with a writing partner for a week to rewrite the overlong script to make it more action-oriented and less of a "soap opera".[3]
A group of German saboteurs infiltrates the Dunkirk evacuation to enter the UK unnoticed and disrupt British air defences. During the Battle of Britain, a squad of soldiers is assigned the task of identifying the enemy agents and preventing them from changing the course of the conflict overhead. Second World War drama, starring Frederick Stafford and Van Johnson
Enzo G. Castellari is best known for his 1978 Macaroni Combat movie The Inglorious Bastards, which inspired Quentin Tarantino to the similarly titled Inglourious Basterds. In 1969 he made Eagles over London. It was a smash hit in Europe, but remained virtually unknown in the US until Tarantino introduced it to American audiences. It tells a complicated spy story set in wartime, placed against the background of major historic events such as the Dunkirk Evacuation, the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. It was a co-production with France and Spain, obviously made with a decent budget; in some scenes hundreds of extras are used and the modern editing techniques - notably the split screen - give the film a sophisticated look.
The story begins in May 1940, at Dunkirk. Large numbers of British, French and Canadian troops are cornered on the Dunkirk beaches by the German army. They are saved by a hastily assembled fleet in what is known to history as 'Operation Dynamo'. One of the British officers, Captain Paul Stevens, discovers that a group of German saboteurs have infiltrated the British ranks: they have murdered a group of British soldiers and made the crossing by assuming their identity. After he has convinced (not without difficulty) his superiors that the country is in danger he is allocated the assignment to track the saboteurs down, not realizing that his roommate, a 'British' officer he has met at Dunkirk, is one of the men he is looking for ...
Quentin Tarantino described this movie - one of his favorites - as: "It's like Guy Hamilton's Battle of Britain except, instead of dull airplanes and soap opera stuff, there's battle action and infiltrating Nazi saboteurs!" (*1). The lukewarm reception of Hamilton's big budget movie (reportedly it had a budget of $17 million) may have helped Castellari; his movie is not entirely free from soap opera-like moments (at least one scene with Stafford and Galli making love during a bomb raid that is completely over the top), but compared to Hamilton's trite blockbuster, Castellari's war adventure looks action-packed and exciting. Another key factor for its success, was the decline in the production of spaghetti westerns around this time: in 1969 the genre seemed over its peak and the comedy western à la Trinity had not yet been invented. The movie's success gave the Italian genre movie industry the boost it desperately needed: all of a sudden everybody wanted to make a war movie!
Originally Castellari would only do some special effects sequences; he was asked to use contemporary newsreel footage and to apply the split-screen technique of movies like The Thomas Crown Affair and The Boston Strangler. The producers were so impressed by the things he did, that he was offered to direct the entire movie (*2). To create a large scale illusion, Castellari uses a wide range of special effects: the naval vessels we spot outside the Dunkirk coastline were apparently created with the help of matte paintings and elaborated miniatures of buildings (or entire city quarters) are used during the massive Luftwaffe bombardments of the City of London. Some of these effects work better than others, but overall the results are very convincing, occasionally even startling.
This doesn't mean that Eagles over London is free from shortcomings. The espionage story is well-told but not very credible; it's difficult to imagine that German saboteurs would try to infiltrate the British Isles via the Dunkirk beaches (the allied soldiers were under constant attack; they were expected to be annihilated or captured; Winston Churchill called the evacuation a 'miracle of deliverance') (*3). It's nice to see spaghetti western regulars like Luigi Pistilli and Edoardo Fajardo play Nazi officers, but the characters (including the two leads) are drawn to sketchy and like more often is the case in these type of productions, the variety of accents and nationalities works confusing. Czech-Austrian actor Stafford seems an odd choice to play a British officer and while most actors were dubbed by British voice actors Van Johnson - who plays an RAF officer - delivers his own lines with a broad American accent.
thanks dazdaman!BTW that spit in the photo was real but in the boming scenes over london at night, they are models. I swear you can even see the strings! One sceen in particular looks like a 2 dimensional left side view of a spitfire from inside the canopy on a HE111 actually it looks like the spit is glued or taped to the canopy!
Original vintage movie poster for an Italian action drama film Eagles over London / La Battaglia d'Inghilterra directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring Frederick Stafford, Van Johnson, Francisco Rabal, Evelyn Stewart, Luigi Pistilli, Renzo Palmer, Christian Hay and Jacques Berthier, based on the Battle of Britain (1940). Dynamic artwork showing Nazi German and British RAF planes and zeppelins flying across searchlight beams fighting in the sky over London with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament surrounded by buildings on fire on both sides of the River Thames in the background and four small black and white photographs presenting the main actors of the film above, a snipe with title in English over the Italian name of the film La Battaglia d'Inghilterra below. Printed in Italy by Policrom S.P.A., Roma. Large size. Very good condition, restored folds and paper loss on margins, backed on linen.
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