‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’ by Geoff Dyer

My Review (5 stars out of 5)

Writer and critic Geoff Dyer serves up a scene-by-scene analysis of the classic war movie, ‘Where Eagles Dare’ highlighting his favourite scenes as well as commenting on some of the actors’ proclivities – such as Richard Burton’s drinking, and Clint Eastwood’s stock-in-trade expressions.

‘Where Eagles Dare’ is one of my all-time favourite movies and has been since I first saw it as a teenager. It’s fair to say that parts of the film went over my head (such as the whole thing about the notebooks), but having now watched it a trillion times, I didn’t think there was much left that I didn’t know. However, Geoff Dyer’s approach is to lay out the movie scene-by-scene, dropping in details like how Richard Burton managed to effortlessly scale the castle walls as if mountaineering was something he did every day. Dyer manages to throw in dozens of literary and filmic links to the movie, as well as pointing out plot holes and various activities that make no sense in terms of the story.

Like Mr Dyer, I too read loads of Desmond Bagley books but for some reason I never got around to Alistair MacLean (on whose book the movie was based). In the final section of ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’ Dyer explains his reasons behind writing the book and also reveals that he now finds MacLean’s thrillers unreadable. Looking them up on Amazon, I have to agree and am glad I didn’t waste my time on them.

Despite its shortcomings, ‘Where Eagles Dare’ is still a great film and reading this little book was as entertaining and insightful as watching the film with Burton and Eastwood by my side.

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