Chasse à l'homme

I first saw this on TV back in the mid 70's and it was definitely a story of the time, when WW2 was still in the forefront of many peoples minds.

Maybe not to the more modern taste, I've always enjoyed this film. It has a feel of the Thirty Nine Steps about it.

Just before the outbreak of WW2, Peter O'Tooles character fails in his revenge assassination attempt on Hitler. With the help of a sympathetic German, and English sailors, he escapes back to Britain and has to go on the run from the British and Nazi authorities who are both after him to return to Germany to answer for his "crime". He goes into hiding in the country, drawing on his hunting experience, and waits to the outbreak of war when his assassination attempt is looked on in a completely different light by the British, who now see him as a potential asset.

For those of us who still wonder at how the world could have been hornswaggled so long by Hitler, this movie gives us an insight into the spell he had some of the English under!! O'toole plays the brave nobleman who attempts to assassinate the personable madman at his holiday digs. I could have done without the 'pull his fingernails out' scene, but the point was driven home.

He was tortured and escaped with some help from a wonderful German who considered the Nazi thugs 'trash', as well as English sailors. Knowing O'toole's background in the Royal Navy, his disguise didn't take much acting. The 'by the book' captain who refused to allow a search of his vessel by the intimidating Germans made me wonder if any of my compatriots would stand up to that today.

If you've never seen the Tower Bridge, the significance of O'toole coming up from his cramped hiding place onboard the ship, seeing the underside of the bridge, might escape you. He portrays the joie de vivre of that moment wonderfully. I could just fall into his beautiful blue eyes!!

The interplay between O'toole and his uncle, as the love then hate relationship between Parliament and Hitler progresses, gives great insight into how this horror happened. O'toole, the rogue, is under suspicion and search by, not only the Nazi English agents, but his own people, normal agents of government!!! This only added to my usual cynicism concerning governments. Now to read the book!!!!

I first saw this in the mid 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently. This film is criminally underrated n it definitely deserves a remake with bigger budget, action sequences n a different ending.

The film is about a hunter who gets a chance to shoot Hitler but misses it. He is then tortured n left for dead by the nazis. He somehow manages to make his way back to his home country. Fearing of extradition n the nazis n local cops after him, he goes under the ground. Yes, literally under the ground. The film turns into a survival thriller n we come to kno that our hunter is the forefather of Rambo. The film is beautifully shot with some amazing countryside locations. The editing, acting n direction is top notch.

This film is based on a book. There is a 1941 film version. The writer of the Rambo series got heavily inspired by the book upon which this film is based on.

The story is good, but the whole thing is let down by some truly appalling camera work/lighting that makes the whole thing look cheap as chips. Some decent, if slightly wooden, acting from O'Toole, upstaged by Sim.

Based on Geoffrey Household's rather far-fetched book, Peter O'Toole is British aristocrat "Sir Robert" who lays plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler before the start of WWII. After missing an open goal his plan goes awry, and after some fairly brutal torture at the hands of his captor Michael Byrne, he manages to flee the scene of his own proposed demise and to make it back to Blighty where his solicitor and kindly uncle (Alastair Sim) recommends he keep his head down for fear his plot be publicised, and the country be dragged into war...! The Nazis have not, however, given up on their chase and his efforts to stay out of their sights quite literally drive him underground. It is all just a bit silly, to be honest, and the sort of stiff-upper-lip gentlemanly code of hunter and hunted borders a little too much on the sarcastic to be scary and not enough to be amusing - even though O'Toole does have some quite pithy put downs for his Aryan pursuers. It is just about worth watching for fans of the star, but the rest of it need not have been remade from the superior 1941 iteration.