The Critics' Corner on THE DAY OF THE JACKAL

"Zinnemann's way with this material is cool, sober and geographically stunning. Where Hitchcock would have made it funny, Zinnemann plays it straight (and perhaps dull) allowing himself only that margin of humor provided by the bureaucratic style of the good guys (cops and government functionaries), so that the funniest line of the film comes when someone says of De Gaulle: "At 10 he rekindles the eternal flame." - Vincent Canby, New York Times, May 17, 1973

Praising Zinnemann for "showing us exactly what a thinking-man's fact-fiction thriller can - and should - be," Judith Christ in New York magazine commended the director for "yielding to none of the technical tomfoolery-and-jazz, box office casting and mob-catering sex-and-violence that have misled so many of his peers."

"The triumph of Zinnemann's work is that the suspense is sustained; and the movie as a whole celebrates the old-fashioned values of movie craftsmanship." - Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times, 1973.

"The Day of the Jackal makes one appreciate anew the wonderful narrative efficiency of the movies. Frederick Forsyth's best-selling novel¿kept losing its basically simple story line in a forest of words...This is the kind of material a good director can give us in the wink of a panning camera's eye...What might have been just another expensive entertainment becomes, on a technical level, a textbook of reels in the near-forgotten subject of concise moviemaking." - Richard Schickel, Time, May 28, 1973

"The Day of the Jackal is a fascinating contrast to Zinnemann's films of conscience, for the plot hinges on the professional killer's complete lack of conscience or other human attributes that would make it possible to trace him. Given such a protagonist, Zinnemann's impersonal style cannot but be an asset." - Jean-Pierre Coursodon, American Directors (McGraw Hill, 1983)

"...this adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's best-seller¿provides an occasionally satisfying core of tension that owes less to Zinnemann's penchant for High Noon-ish clock-watching than to his schematic opposition of a cold, chameleonic lone killer....with a messy, though equally ruthless, bureaucracy of 'democratic' defence. Low on documentary conviction and political context, but an intriguing exercise in concealing the obvious." - Paul Taylor, TimeOut.

"The Day of the Jackal is all the more depressing a work to see through; plot-heavy, without any of the honest character study that Zinnemann once knew how to manage, and with Frenchmen talking like zis and zat. No director could have made a flop of The Day of the Jackal, but few could have taken its listless neglect of style so compliantly." - David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.

"In spite of its flat, characterless reporter's style and unsurprising denoucement (history insists that the Jackal must fail in his attempt on De Gaulle's life; equally immutable laws of suspense fiction require that at the moment of failure he must have his towering target fairly in his sights), the novel predictably scooped the pool. There is a very steady appetite for fiction sustained by the apparatus of fact; and Forsyth's ingenious and thorough construction left a strong impression that if the characters were only best cardboard, the buildings and the weapons and the timetables were authentic...But the film's theory is often better than its practice. Where accuracy is such a factor, it falls down on surprising points - like the failure to give any clear indication of how the Jackal, having tricked his way inside the tightest of police cordons, has planned his escape...And partly because of the language dilemma, there is a general thinness of atmosphere...In The Day of the Jackal, the viewpoint is merely neutral; like the Jackal himself, the film is something of a professional without an identity." - Penelope Houston, Sight and Sound.

"Fred Zinnemann's movie version of The Day of the Jackal looks so attractive and moves with such crisp authority for the first reel or two that one anticipates a more satisfying picture than fate ultimately has in store. Jackal turns out to be a peculiarly neutral, noncommital entertainment: moderately absorbing but not in the least exciting or intense; a skillfully crafted exercise in essentially spurious suspense." - Gary Arnold, The Washington Post.

"One hell of an exciting movie." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times.

"A film that believes in its own vision can seduce us into forgiving its failings - even as serious a flaw as the improbable destruction of the killer hero at the last possible moment. But this is a frigid enterprise, attempting only to turn the synthetic suspense of a best seller into cold cash." - Paul D. Zimmerman, Newsweek.

Awards & Honors

The Day of the Jackal received an Academy Award® Nomination for Best Editing (Ralph Kemplen). Kemplen's work was also nominated for an American Cinema Editors Award and won the British Academy Award.

The picture received six British Academy Award nominations: Best Film, Direction, Screenplay, Soundtrack, Supporting Actor (Michael Lonsdale), Supporting Actress (Delphine Seyrig).

Golden Globe nominations for Best Motion Picture (Drama), Director and Screenplay.

Compiled by Rob Nixon & Jeff Stafford