'Broadsword Calling Danny Boy'

From a writer of "derelict luminosity" (David Mitchell), a scene-by-scene exploration of Where Eagles Dare, one of cinema's most cherished and popular films, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Geoff Dyer has loved Where Eagles Dare since childhood. It is both a thrillingly realized Alpine World War II adventure with tough, compelling acting from its two great stars, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and a flippant travesty, reducing the central disaster in Europe's modern history to a series of huge explosions and peopled by campy SS officers. As he did in Zona--which took on Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker--in Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, Dyer gives us a scene-by-scene reaction to and reading of the film. And perhaps as only he can, the author both extols and denigrates--lovingly and entertainingly no matter which way he falls--this acme of the late '60s action movie.