STORYTELLING AND THE MORAL COMPASS: THE EAGLE HAS LANDED VS. WHERE EAGLES DARE

Today I want to conduct a bit of a thought experiment. The issue is the moral compass as it works in storytelling. The subjects are both bestselling novels which also became hit movies -- "Where Eagles Dare" and "The Eagle Has Landed." I selected these films because of their very close similarities both in terms of genre, setting, time period and general plot points, and because of the sharply different way in which they behave on a purely moral scale. I am interested in the issue both as a storyteller myself, and as a consumer of stories in all formats, and because for some time now I have sensed a general decline in the efficiency of the moral compass as it relates to storytelling, and worry that the audience, too, is losing its ability to make moral judgments -- that it has become morally blind.

To begin with the basics:

"Where Eagles Dare" is a 1968 action suspense film, based on a novel of the same name by Alistair McLean, about a group of Allied commandos who dress up in German uniforms and parachute into the Third Reich, ostensibly to rescue an American general captured by the Nazis.

"The Eagle Has Landed" is a 1975 action suspense movie, based on a novel of the same name by Jack Higgins, about a group of German commandos who parachute into England dressed in Allied uniforms, ostensibly to kidnap Winston Churchill.

The similarity is obvious, but the films differ in two distinct ways. The first is in terms of realism, and the second is in terms of morality. Let us tackle the differences in order, because as it happens, the realism is to some extent an element in the morality of the stories.

"Where Eagles Dare" is realistic at first. The aim of the Allied team is not beyond belief -- commando raids are daring and improbable by nature, after all, which is why the men who carry them out are usually picked so carefully and so highly trained. Nobody exhibits any super-human characteristics, and things go very wrong early on for our putative heroes -- one of their number is murdered by a traitor or traitors within their ranks, and later, the location of two of the commandos, Smith and Schiffer (played by Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, respectively) is also betrayed by the double agent/s. Things going wrong, especially in military operations, is more likely than things going right, so the first act of the movie seems as realistic as can be expected given the demands of the genre and the movie business generally. However, beginning with the second act, where our protagonists begin making a bloody nuisance of themselves to the Germans, realism goes over the horizon and is ne'er seen again. The Germans, and the British traitors in their pay, prove to be completely helpless once all the scheisse hits the fan: they cannot shoot straight, their guns run out of ammunition at critical moments, they are cowards, they are foolish, they fall for every ruse and feint, leave themselves utterly vulnerable when they should be suspicious, blunder into every ambush, fail to heed any warnings, and die in droves. A more hapless group could not be found outside of the Three Stooges. The needs of the plot simply crush logic at every step. At one point, for example, Smith is shot through the hand by a German soldier. He wraps his hand in a bandage and then, mere minutes later, manages to A) leap off a rapidly moving cable car to another car passing at a slower speed; B) dodge a salvo of bullets fired through the car's roof at point blank range (the traitor conveniently runs out of bullets, something we never see the Allies do though they never stop shooting for the last half an hour of the movie), C) defeat both men in hand to hand combat despite having a bullet smashed hand, D) fix a bomb to the car, and E) leap back to the other car before the bomb goes off. I could go on, but you get the point. A movie that began more or less grounded in the believable becomes a kind if ultraviolent kill fantasy, a first person shooter on God mode with infinite ammo. What does this have to do with morality, you ask? We will answer this in a moment. Let us first go over the second of the two stories.

"The Eagle Has Landed" is as realistic as this sort of film can possibly be. The German commandos, recruited by a character played by Robert Duvall, are under suspended sentence of death from their own government because they tried to save Jews being sent to concentration camps. They are embittered men, now only loyal to their commanding officer, Steiner (Michael Caine), but they are promised a pardon if they pull off their improbable kidnapping mission. Aiding them is an Irish nationalist spy, Devlin (Donald Sutherland) who doesn't care for Germans all that much but hates the British far more. Opposing them are
American Rangers led by the oafish Col. Pitts (Larry Hagman) and his competent underling, Capt. Clarke (Treat Williams). Unlike "Where Eagles Dare," the Germans themselves in "The Eagle Has Landed" are depicted as first-class soldiers with a first-class officer, determined and efficient, even ruthless, but also humane -- their true identity as spies is discovered when one of their members sacrifices his life saving a British child from drowning. Indeed, "Landed" uses the moral compass frequently to remind the audience that while they may not be in sympathy with the Germans' aims, the Germans themselves are quite sympathetic. When combat breaks out between the two sides, the Americans are initially massacred, only the turning the tables when Pitts is mercifully killed off by a German spy and the competent Clarke takes over. This is a realistic depiction of warfare rooted in logic -- the Germans are well-trained, well-lead, and experienced, while the Rangers are well-trained, ineptly lead and inexperienced.

And this leads me to the moral element. "Where Eagles Dare" is a film which takes the stance that the heroes, by virtue of their affiliation (the Allies), are exempt not merely from the rules of war, but from all forms of basic human decency. The putative hero, Smith, seems to be a void of emotion when it comes to slitting throats and shooting people in the back, whereas his sidekick, Schiffer, shows distinctly sadistic qualities, which includes saying smiling and saying "Hi!" before he shoots some unarmed, unsuspecting clerk in the guts, and mocking a German he stabbed in the back for bleeding to death faster because he was afraid. The film's infamous climax features an almost incredibly drawn-out sequence in which Smith kills a double agent who is begging hysterically for mercy: there is even a close up of Smith smashing his boot into the man's face so we can see the blood on his teeth before he falls to his death, his last work, of course being a deafening "PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!"

"The Eagle Has Landed" does not merely contain a moral element, the moral compasses of its various characters are central to the entire story. Devlin, an otherwise rather cruel IRA gunman the Germans employ as their local agent, is partially undone because he falls in love with a local English girl: he should kill her when she tumbles to his identity, but he does not. Steiner, the German commando officer, ends up forced into his role as an assassin for trying to save Jews being sent to extermination by the SS. Sturm, a German sergeant, drowns trying to save an English child from drowning. And -- and this one is crucial -- Steiner instructs his men to violate orders and wear their own German uniforms beneath the Allied ones, so that in the event of discovery they can fight as soldiers and not as spies -- which is exactly what they do. And the final act of the German commandos is to sacrifice themselves so their commander can slip away to make a final effort to get to Churchill. As for the Americans, the Ranger lieutenant makes a brief if impassioned plea to the Germans to surrender without further bloodshed, noting "there's no such thing as death with honor -- just death." He respects his foes and wants to save them if he can, though he is quite willing to kill them if they refuse: a realistic and reasonable attitude.

These contrasts may strike some readers as naive. War, after all, is not conducted entirely, or even partially, according to any conventions or codes. In all wars without exception, all sides bomb civilian targets, murder prisoners of war, employ forms of torture to obtain information, and clothe agents and spies in enemy uniform to seduce, extort, blackmail, and assassinate enemies. The idea that all parties are equally cruel in war is, however, often manifestly untrue, and in any case, for the purposes of fiction, it is always necessary to establish differences between the hero and the villain, or the protagonist and the antagonist. "Where Eagles Dare" assumes that since the heroes are Allies, they can commit any outrage without compunction, where "The Eagles Has Landed" makes sure to let us know from the beginning that the German characters, though technically the bad guys, abide by a strict and uncompromising code.

Now we return to the element of realism, which as it happens is one and the same as morality, though this is hardly obvious at first glance.

I already noted the profound incompetence, cowardice and stupidity of the Germans and their agents in "Where Eagles Dare,"
but this goes hand in hand with the utter invincibility and perfection of the Allied characters, who never miss, never reload, never fail in their courage or resourcefulness, and exhibit super-human qualities whenever super-human qualities are called for. The character is Smith is not only fearless, immune to pain, and able to outfight two men on top of a cable car in freezing temperatures while nursing a bullet wound in his hand as I said before; he is always three steps ahead of all of his enemies and at least two steps ahead of his friends. There is no curve thrown at him he hasn't seen coming and no twist in the story he does not engineer himself. He is all-knowing as well as invincible. And this godlike mix of perfection and power make nonsense of the entire purpose of the story, which is to keep the audience in suspense. How can suspense exist when the hero is on, if I may be permitted to repeat myself again, God mode with infinite ammo? What's more, how can morality exist when the opposing party in a conflict are made up of extra-fallible mortals who not only won't likely win, but cannot win? The entire basis of heroism is courage, but Smith has no fear, so there is no "dare" in this particular eagle. Likewise, the entire basis of morality in film is the redress of power imbalance, i.e. the bullied and downtrodden fighting back, overcoming odds, and finally triumphing materially or morally over those who oppress them. In "Where Eagles Dare" it is not the Allies who are the underdogs, but the Germans. There is no hope for them: they cannot win, cannot even get some of their own back. The last act of the movie reminded me strongly of a bully brutally beating a helpless victim on a playground over and over again, but without even the belated intervention of an adult. It is a fulfillment of a masturbatory power fantasy, indistinguishable in a way from sexual sadism, and, ironically, just the sort of entertainment that would appeal to a fascist mind.

Let me linger on this point for a moment. If we accept Orwell's definition of fascism as "the worship of power" then "Where Eagles Dare" is a fascist film. In it the heroes are not invincible because they are right, they are right because they are invincible. Their legitimacy derives entirely from that invincibility. This is out and out Nazi logic. Ironic, no?

"The Eagle Has Landed," in contrast, presents the German case as nearly hopeless from the outset. The commandos themselves are doomed men already, having been sentenced to death for trying to aid the Jews: their mission, though basically suicidal, offers a glimmer of a chance at pardon. Steiner agrees to the mission only on that basis, and though he handles himself brilliantly, his insistence that his men fight as Germans and not spies ensures that the odds against him will lengthen even further. That pesky sense of morality again! That insistence that honor is more important than the mission, or even survival! This is not a thought that would occur to Major Smith, and certainly not to Lieutenant Schiffer, who in one scene shoots a woman (albeit a nasty one) in the back as she tries to run away from him.

The task of "The Eagle Has Landed" is to make the reader/viewer sympathetic with the German goal -- which is to kidnap Churchill and kill him if he won't be kidnapped. This is a monumental task for an English-speaking audience and the fact it is carried out so successfully comes entirely from fact that Steiner and Devlin are men of honor, even if they are fighting on the wrong side of the line. They are sympathetic because they are human and fallible, because their plans sometimes go awry, because not all of their bullets hit their targets, and because their enemies are not fools. In short, they are the underdogs, and audiences who not worship power for its own sake respond instinctively to the struggle of an underdog. They are not "right" per se, but they are right enough to root for, because they are not invincible.

The decline of morality in society was something Orwell constantly railed about, noting ascerbically that "we root for the big man over the little man, the overdog over the underdog." This, too, was a fascist outlook, a worship of success and power for their own sakes. He saw it metastisizing into the literature of the day, but did not live long enough to see it dominate film, as it did after World War 2 ended. It took some time for the film industry to smash its own moral compass, but it was well on its way to doing this by the time "Where Eagles Dare" was turned into a movie.

It's worth noting that McLean's novel, though convoluted and silly enough in its own right, is not as violent nor as cruel as the film adaptation. As I noted in another blog, Major Smith is considerably less eager to kill people in the book -- he drugs two Germans rather than kill them, and evem pulls an unconscious German soldier out of a burning car (in the movie, Clint Eastwood's character throws an unconscious soldier into that car and then blows it up.) I believe this is because McLean understood that heroes have to behave heroically, which in practical terms means more than just being able to kill large numbers of the enemy -- heroes, by dictionary definition, require a "noble quality," and there is no more noble quality than mercy. Caine's Col. Steiner is described by a Nazi in "Landed" as "intelligent, courageous, ruthless, and a romantic fool." Smith, if similarly appraised, would be all of that minus the "romantic fool" element. But its precisely that element which makes Steiner moral; it is precisely that element which makes him human. The entirety of his nobility lays in the fact that he has limits -- there are things he simply will not do, no matter how much they would help his cause, because either code or conscience will not permit them. Most heroism comes with a tragic element, and Steiner, too, checks this box. Smith, on the other hand, does not have limits, his ends justify any means whatsoever, and in lacking scruples he surrenders all claim to morality, humanity, and nobility. He is simply an infallible killing machine, and therefore neither relatable nor interesting, much less any type of hero.

Now, it may seem that I am making too much of action adventure novels turned into popcorn entertainment films. I disagree. The morality of a society is culturally indicated. Our books, our television shows, our movies, our music and all the rest of it are the best indicators of what we value, and what we abominate. The seeds of an utterly amoral, power-worshipping movie like "Inglourious Basterds" were laid with "Where Eagles Dare" and its ilk. The ectsatic public reaction to that film -- in which, again, the protagonist has no noble qualities, no morality or decency, no sense of honor, and will do anything no matter how bestial to achieve an end, because after all, might makes right, or as the Nazis would say, Sieg Heil! -- goes a long way to showing why the old-fashioned notion that something should differentiate the good guy and the bad guy besides who wins in the end, is very nearly dead indeed.