Eye Of The Needle [DVD]

Eye of the Needle is part-espionage, part psychological thriller, part repressed love story. It's as gloomy as a rainy day. The film also is exciting, well acted and engrossing. Please note: elements of the plot are discussed below. Henry Faber (Donald Sutherland) is a ruthless, extremely competent German spy in England during WWII masquerading as an Englishman. When threatened, he's as quick to kill his landlady who discovers him at a clandestine radio as he is a fellow spy who might be captured. His preferred method is a quick, deep stiletto thrust to the heart.

Faber discovers that Patton's Third Army is a sham and that the invasion of Europe will take place at Normandy, not the Pas de Calais. Before he can transmit the information, he's shipwrecked on isolated Storm Island off the coast of Scotland. The only inhabitants are David (Christopher Cazenove), a former fighter pilot who lost the use of his legs on the day of his marriage four years ago, his wife, Lucy (Kate Nelligan), their four-year-old son, Joe, and Tom, an elderly man, often drunk, who looks after the lighthouse and takes care of the couple's sheep. David is deeply embittered, full of self-pity and suspicious. He's either unable or unwilling to be intimate with his wife. Lucy is loyal, but so lonely for affection she is drawn to the ship-wrecked, charming man in her midst. In some strange way, Faber also is drawn to Lucy...perhaps not by love, exactly, but toward a kind of closeness he has never permitted himself before.

One night, when David has taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed, Faber and Lucy are talking in front of the fire. Faber tells Lucy that her little boy is lucky to be so obviously loved. "I'm his mother," Lucy says with a smile, "and parents love their children." "No, no, not all," Faber says. "Some parents use their children...set goals for them...goals they weren't able to attain in their lives. Hardly love, do you think?" They make love that night. Later, in his need to contact a German submarine which will take him back to Germany with the invasion information, Faber will kill her husband, kill Tom, threaten Lucy...and when it would have been easy to kill Lucy, choose not to. "The war has come down to the two of us," he tells her. "I did what I had to do. It can't be undone. I'm sorry." The ending is, I suppose, inevitable.

The first half of Eye of the Needle is an exciting espionage story. We learn who the Needle is, how he works, how resourceful and how deadly he can be. The second half of the movie takes place on Storm Island. Slowly we see this strange relationship between two needy people evolve, one of whom, the Needle, has shown himself to be coldly ruthless. At the same time, we're drawn to Lucy as she realizes that the man she has given herself to has killed her husband and may be a threat to her son and herself. The climax of the movie, a bloody showdown in the decrepit lighthouse and then on the wet, stoney beach where Faber has discovered a small row boat he can use to get to the waiting sub, is harrowing. It's melodramatic and it packs a punch.

Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan are both, in my opinion, superb actors, and they were never better than in this movie. The DVD picture is excellent. There are no extras.

There are not enough stars to describe this movie. As with any movie, if the entire book were portrayed, the movie would take eight hours. Therefore they could only show the relevant parts and had to do some voice over action to explain the missing logic. But they did not change the plot or the essence of the plot. And I would not think in a million years that Donald Sutherland would be picked to play Henry Faber. Yet now that I see the movie, He is the only person that could be believable as an attractive aloof German spy. Where did they find Kate Nelligan, who played Lucy so well? The island "Isle of Mull, Scotland, UK" looked just like the book. I am glad this is on DVD, as the as tapes tend to ware out.

I return to this film at least once a year, which may be thought a bit sad, but in fact is a testament to its dramatic force. In WW2 London, Donald Sutherland, an Abwehr spy and ex-Kriegsmarine officer, trusted by both Canaris and Hitler, "The Needle" (from his method of disposing of the unwanted...), is uncovered and flees to Western Scotland. On a small island are living crippled ex-pilot Cristopher Cazenove lives, drunken and resentful, with his wife Kate Neligan and their small son. The Needle wants to rendezvous with a U-Boat, in order to transmit in person to Hitler vital information about the likely invasion point in 1944 France.

There are a few weak points in the plot: by 1943-44, the Red Army was already pushing the Wehrmacht aside on the Eastern Front, surely the most important strategic factor of WW2; secondly, the ending, though effective, is slightly less than plausible, though not absurdly so. However, overall, this is a great film for a dull afternoon. The locations and filming are good, albeit that Marylebone Station in London seems to be substituted for 1940's Euston (replaced by something monumentally ugly and architecturally poor by the time this film was made)and one can see the 1960's redbrick hotel (Thistle? Scot? I forget the name but stayed there once) beyond Marylebone, in one --brief-- shot. These are, perhaps, only quibbles, which is why I give the film 5 stars. See it.