Eagle's Wing
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''Eagle's Wing'' is a Euro-Western
Eastmancolor Eastmancolor is a trade name used by Eastman Kodak for a number of related film and processing technologies associated with color motion picture production and referring to George Eastman, founder of Kodak. Eastmancolor, introduced in 1950, was on ...
film made in 1979. It stars
Martin Sheen Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. He first became known for his roles in the films ''The Subject Was Roses'' (1968) and ''Badlands'' (1973), and later achieved wid ...
,
Sam Waterston Samuel Atkinson Waterston (born November 15, 1940) is an American actor. Waterston is known for his work in theater, television and, film. He has received a Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, and has receive ...
and
Harvey Keitel Harvey Keitel ( ; born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of morally ambiguous and "tough guy" characters. He first rose to prominence during the New Hollywood movement, and has held a long-running association with ...
. It was directed by
Anthony Harvey Anthony Harvey (3 June 1930 – 23 November 2017) was an English filmmaker who began his career as a teenage actor, was a film editor in the 1950s and moved into directing in the mid-1960s. Harvey had fifteen film credits as an editor, and he ...
, with a story by Michael Syson and a screenplay by
John Briley Richard John Briley (June 25, 1925 – December 14, 2019) was an American writer best known for screenplays of biographical films. He won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar at the 55th Academy Awards for ''Gandhi'' (1982). As well as film ...
. It won the
British Society of Cinematographers The British Society of Cinematographers (abbreviated B.S.C. or BSC) was formed in 1949 by Bert Easey (23 August 1901 – 28 February 1973), the then head of the Denham and Pinewood studio camera departments, to represent British cinematographers ...
Best Cinematography Award for 1979.


Plot

The story has three plot strands that run concurrently through the film: a stagecoach carrying a rich widow home to her family's hacienda, a war party of Indians returning to their village, and two fur traders waiting to meet a different group of Indians with whom they trade. The war party attacks the other Indians and kills their leader, who owns a magnificent white Arabian stallion. White Bull (Waterston) attempts to capture the horse, but it is too quick and makes off carrying the dead chief. Pike (Sheen) and Henry (Keitel) wait in vain for the traders and are then attacked themselves by the war party. Henry is killed, the Indians take the trader's horses, and Pike is left alone with only a mule. Travelling alone, he comes across the funeral of the dead chief. He saves the white stallion from ritual slaughter, abandons his mule, and continues his travels. The Medicine Man conducting the ritual is accidentally killed while Pike is taking the horse. The war party finds the stage coach, attacks it, kills the driver, guard, and one of the passengers, and then leaves White Bull to ransack the coach and passengers of all valuables. White Bull gathers a hoard of jewels and other valuable items, takes a white girl for himself, and leaves the other survivors standing in the desert. One of the survivors, a priest, takes a coach horse and rides off to alert the hacienda. The story then becomes a four-way chase. After gaining the white stallion from Pike, White Bull, the girl, the treasure and the stallion continue towards the native's village; Pike goes after the stallion; a posse from the hacienda sets out to recover the coach passengers and the girl, and members of the Medicine Man's tribe seek to avenge his death. After a series of to-and-fro adventures, the film ends as White Bull rides off alone with the stallion while Pike, utterly defeated, stands and watches him go; the girl is still behind Pike, waiting to be rescued.


Cast

*
Martin Sheen Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), known professionally as Martin Sheen, is an American actor. He first became known for his roles in the films ''The Subject Was Roses'' (1968) and ''Badlands'' (1973), and later achieved wid ...
as Pike *
Sam Waterston Samuel Atkinson Waterston (born November 15, 1940) is an American actor. Waterston is known for his work in theater, television and, film. He has received a Primetime Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, and has receive ...
as White Bull *
Harvey Keitel Harvey Keitel ( ; born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of morally ambiguous and "tough guy" characters. He first rose to prominence during the New Hollywood movement, and has held a long-running association with ...
as Henry * Stephane Audran as The Widow *
John Castle John Michael Frederick Castle (born 14 January 1940) is an English actor. He is best known for his film and television work, most notably playing Bill in Michelangelo Antonioni's ''Blowup'' (1966) and Geoffrey in ''The Lion in Winter'' (196 ...
as The Priest *
Caroline Langrishe Caroline Langrishe (born 10 January 1958) is an English actress. Early life Born in London, Langrishe is the elder daughter of Patrick Nicholas Langrishe (1932–2022), of The Manor House, Sellindge, Kent, a Lieutenant in the 11th Hussars, late ...
as Judith * Jorge Russek as Gonzalo *
Manuel Ojeda Manuel Salvador Ojeda Armenta (4 November 1940 – 11 August 2022) was a Mexican actor. Ojeda was one of the most active actors of television and cinema in Mexico. He played the villain, Zolo, in the Hollywood film ''Romancing the Stone''. Ca ...
as Miguel * Jorge Luke as Red Sky * Pedro Damian as Jose *
Claudio Brook Claudio Brook (born Claude Sydney Brook Marnat, 28 August 1927 – 18 October 1995) was a Mexican actor. Life Born in Mexico City, Brook had a prolific career, making around 100 film and television appearances in his 38 years as an actor. He ...
as Sanchez *
José Carlos Ruiz José Carlos Ruiz (born 17 November 1936) is a Mexican film and television actor. He starred in telenovelas such as ''María Isabel'', '' Soñadoras'', '' Mariana de la noche'', '' Sortilegio'', '' Soy Tu Dueña'', '' Un Refugio para el Amor'', ...
as Lame Wolf * Farnesio de Bernal as The Monk * Cecilia Camacho as The Young Girl *
Enrique Lucero Enrique Lucero (October 9, 1920 – May 9, 1989) was a Mexican-American film actor. He was known for such films as '' Macario'' (1960) and ''Two Mules for Sister Sara'' (1970). He also played the role of the "Indian Chief" in ''Buck and the Preac ...
as The Shaman


Production


Development

The film was based on a story by Michael Syson, who worked for the BBC. Director Anthony Harvey said Syson "wrote it as kind of a short story, a series of ideas with a very strong story line but not really a script." The film attracted Harvey "as a chance to break away from the subjects I have done before, really to have complete freedom. It was a film with a very thin script in a way but it had a very strong story. It didn't have much detail and no dialogue at all, except for the first ten minutes between Harvey Keitel and Sam Waterston. It was very much a director's subject." Harvey said "The moment I read ''Eagle's Wing'' I knew very clearly the kind of things I wanted visually, and talked to Billy Williams for days about it." Harvey says he and John Briley sat down and wrote a script "for about a month before we went on location, just to make sense of it." "It's about the way we spend our lives reaching for the unobtainable," said Harvey. "We search for something which is, sadly, seldom found. The impossible dream, if you like." Financed was raised from the Rank Organisation, who made it as part of a slate of eight films with an estimated total budget of £10 million. (The others were ''Wombling Free'', ''The 39 Steps'', ''The Lady Vanishes'', ''The Riddle of the Sands'', ''Silver Dream Racer'', ''Tarka the Otter'' and ''Bad Timing''.)


Shooting

The film was shot in nine weeks in and around Durango, Mexico in early 1978, finishing by April. Harvey says this was "short but we had the luxury of a small unit." Harvey said they would go "three or four hours out of" Durango. "We were looking for desolate landscapes. The movie is about loneliness and people who don't communicate... We didn't want any romantic David Lean sunsets but rather black and threatening skies." He looked for unusual landscapes that appeared "like the surface of the moon". "Mexico is a most thrilling country to work in," said Harvey, who in August 1978 was planning on making another film there, a version of the novel ''Under the Volcano''.


Post Production

Harvey says after filming was complete and he was on another project, ''Players'', "the money people came in and... made a number of cuts and put back some things I had cut out."


Reception

The film was released in England in 1979. Harvey said "the reviews couldn't have been better if I'd written them myself." ''The Observer'' called it "dazzling" and ''The Guardian'' saying it was "well worth seeing" although adding "if the film doesn't quite work, it is because it discovers what it is about a trifle too late in the day." However the film was not a commercial success and it was a number of years before it was released in the US to varied reviews. Alexander Walker called it "a well directed Western" which was "deemed fatally "arty" by some of the Rank executives and had difficulty getting wide bookings even in the group's own cinema chains." According to John Briley the film was "almost universally praised" but Rank "which owns the best West End cinemas, did not even put the film in a Rank cinema. Instead it was placed in a side-street cinema that has almost exclusively shown continental sex film." Briley claims "when the reviews came out" for ''Eagle's Wing'' "a large advertising campaign was undertaken" but "the film stayed in the sex house while other Rank West End cinemas showed re-runs of Disney films." Briley accused the Rank's lack of enthusiasm for the film was due to their disbelief in British talent and a reluctance to become involved in film production again ("there has always been at Rank a lively death wish for the whole awkward business. It is so much easier selling Xerox machines and building hotels"). In February 1980 the Rank Organisation reported the losses on ''Eagle's Wing'', ''The Lady Vanishes'' and ''Riddle of the Sands'' would be £2-3 million, contributing to an overall loss to Rank that year of £1.5 million. It was one of the last movies financed by the
Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribu ...
.


References


External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Eagle's Wing 1979 Western (genre) films 1979 films British Western (genre) films Films directed by Anthony Harvey Films scored by Marc Wilkinson Films shot in Mexico Films with screenplays by John Briley 1970s English-language films 1970s British films