The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, September 16-22
Where Eagles Dare (1968)
Directed by Brian G. Hutton
Written by Alistair MacLean in six weeks because Richard Burton wanted an actioner in which his character doesn’t die, the screenplay is no literary masterpiece, but Hutton’s (Kelley’s Heroes) film is a marvel of semi-dopey violent excitement. Set in the frigid Bavarian Alps in 1943, the film is largely explosions, the planting of explosives, cable car derring-do, triple crossings and British Major Burton barking orders at Clint Eastwood’s US Army Ranger, who obeys through squints and slaughters Krauts in the service of their small Allied team’s rescue mission. There’s a paycheck-cashing quality to the star turns, but you’re let in on the fun. Frequent Burton costar Mary Ure and Ingrid Pitt are, like Austria’s Hohenwerfen Castle, merely (fine) eye candy, and Eastwood may’ve picked up a trick or two here for his The Gauntlet . Justin Stewart (September 16, 7:30pm at BAM’s “Overdue”)