History Literature / TheDayOfTheJackal

* TheMole: The OAS is so full of Action Service infiltrators that Rodin trusts only Montclair and Casson, and has to rely on an outsider, namely the title assassin, for the task.

* MissedHimByThatMuch: The Jackal has a habit of escaping shortly before the police arrive to apprehend him.

* EurekaMoment: Rolland pieces together Kowalski's garbled confession and deduces that the OAS have hired a foreign assassin to kill DeGaulle.

* MuggingTheMonster: The forger who decides that it would be a very good idea to blackmail the rather sinister Englishman clearly up to no good who has ''already'' spooked the crap out of him once before. He learns why this is a colossal mistake a bit too late.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: DeGaulle survives and the Jackal is thwarted, but he dies without revealing his true identity, and he's killed multiple civilians over the course of the novel.]]

* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Of a sort. The reason the Jackal [[spoiler: ultimately misses his target is that he wasn't expecting DeGaulle to bend down and give a man a kiss on the cheek instead of shaking his hand. It's implied that the Jackal forgot to consider this because he, as a foreigner, is not used to this French custom, but it's also fitting that the ultra-cool, unflappable Determinator assassin is thwarted by an act of affection]].

* MasterOfDisguise: One of the Jackal's specialties, and why he's so hard to track. He prepares several identities he can switch between in case one gets found out, and is show to be able to come up with new ones relatively quickly.

** The French police obtain the guest records of all the hotels in the country and search through ''every single one of them'' for the signature of the aliases they know the Jackal could be using; this is followed up by seraches through the birth and death records in the countries they know the Jackal was in for said aliases. In a pre-computer era when all records are on paper, this is an ''incredibly'' slow process, but it still provides them with all of the information they need to keep track of the Jackal.

* AmbiguouslyBi: When the Jackal is heading to Paris, he seduces a woman, which allows him to sleep indoors without leaving a paper trail at a hotel. Having arrived in Paris, instead of looking for a suitable woman he lets himself be picked up at a gay bar. He is not shown having any trouble finding the bar, and knows how to dress and act to get the right type of attention ... it's almost like he's familiar with the gay scene in Paris.

* BlackmailBackfire: The documents forger tries to swindle more money out of The Jackal, and follows up by not bowing to the Jackal's one request (that they don't meet at the forger's apartment for payment) when the Jackal accepts. The Jackal [[NeckSnap breaks his neck]] and stuffs his body in a trunk in response.
* BoringButPractical: Lebel eschews fancy espionage tradecraft in favor of simply looking at the case deeper than the other guys. The novel's introductory description of him basically states that the key to his successful career wasn't any sort of brilliance, but rather his meticulous and thorough approach to any investigation. In fact, this is exactly how he catches the Jackal: During the Liberation Day parade, he goes around the security cordon and asks the gendarmes one by one until he stumbles upon one guard who let in a guy who fits the Jackal's profile.
** Similarly, he also doesn't rely on any fancy detective tricks to bust OAS's mole inside the French cabinet. He just bugs their phones, all of them.
** The move by the French police of grabbing the guest records of all the hotels in the country and search through every single one of them for the signature of the aliases they know the Jackal could be using (and the search through all of the birth and death records in the countries they know the Jackal was in for said aliases). Brute-force (and in an era of pure paper records ''incredibly'' slow) but still provides them with all of the information they need to keep track of the Jackal.
** Need money to pay the Jackal? Just rob a bunch of banks and jewelry stores. Though as the BankRobbery trope listing points out, they have to do it so much that they end up giving away that the OAS is up to something.

* ChestOfMedals: The Jackal purchases a number of medals for his crippled veteran disguise. He then looks up what each of the medals is for and selects a subset of them that would make him look distinguished enough that anyone looking at them would accept that he is a wounded war veteran, but not so distinguished that the anyone who recognizes the medals would want to know who he is or how he earned them (single citation for valor, multiple campaign ribbons).

* CodenameTitle: The disgruntled [=OAS=] hires a professional assassin to subtract French President Charles de Gaulle. The assassin chooses the codename "Jackal" upon accepting the mission. When British Intelligence is contacted via the "old boy network," they posit that a mercenary named Charles Calthrop might be the assassin.

* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday: The whole plot becomes a RaceAgainstTheClock once the French figure out that the Jackal will make his move on Liberation Day, with the climax taking place on that day. The fact that the hit is targeted for a major event is justified by the fact that unlike a random simple Tuesday, De Gaulle's schedule on a major holiday cannot be casually altered at the last minute for security reasons. In any case, DeGaulle is far too prideful to not make a public appearance on Liberation Day.

* {{Jerkass}}: Colonel Saint-Clair de Villauban from De Gaulle's staff, a disdainful, snobby and nakedly ambitious careerist whose primary contributions to the Jackal crisis are pompous recitations of things that everyone present already knows or condescending skepticism towards Lebel's many efforts, which he frequently attempts to pick apart and undermine partly out of snobbery towards the low-born mid-ranking police officer and partly so that he can make sure he's seen to be on the right side should Lebel's efforts fail. [[spoiler: He is also TheMole, albeit unwittingly, but his unthinking willingness to blurt out everything that's going on to his mistress doesn't help the reader's opinion of him or his competence.]]

* MasterForger: The Jackal acquires a set of false identity cards from a forger, who is not only able to make such papers but also advises the Jackal how to make himself look older (his plan is to disguise himself as [[spoiler:an elderly wounded veteran so he can conceal a ScaramangaSpecial rifle in a set of crutches]]). The forger makes the fatal mistake of trying to blackmail the Jackal for more money.

* MustHaveCaffeine: One of the first things Lebel does upon getting his mandate to find the Jackal is to get his office its own coffee machine, on the logic that he and his second in command will be doing a lot of all nighters.
* MysteriousPast: Much of the Jackal's past is only hinted at. [[spoiler:What country did he come from? How did he gain his deadly skills? Did he really take part in the assassination of President Trujillo, or was that also a RedHerring? We never find out. Before he took the codename of Jackal the OAS referred to him as "The Englishman" (because the other prospective assassins they considered hiring were German and South African), but all that proves is that he was living in England at the time he was hired, not that he necessarily was English.]]

** The Jackal gets a false passport to conceal his identity. The police detects the ploy which gives them a name and a passport photo to use in the hunt. Had he gone by his real identity the police would never have left square one, being stranded chasing [[spoiler: innocent Charles Calthrops]].

** The Jackal steals the murder victim's car instead of just using the slightly dented one he arrived with. This makes the police [[spoiler: nearly catch him]], it provides them with a name and photo of his backup identity, and alerts them to the fact that [[spoiler:the Jackal has made it safely to Paris]]. The movie tries to avert this by making it very clear his car is a total wreck and will never move again. However it still leaves the very good question of why the Jackal didn't hotwire the first 2CV he came across instead of stealing the car of his victim which is guaranteed to be the subject of an APB in hours at best.

* OneLastJob: One reason why The Jackal's fee is so high is that he knows that he will never be able to work again after such a high-profile assassination, not to mention he will need to pay for a lot of precautions to keep himself hidden--every law-enforcement organization on the ''planet'' will be looking for him for the rest of his life, not to mention Gaullists seeking revenge.

** This is explicitly invoked in the novel; Lebel expresses frustration at one point that the government ministers think the Jackal is escaping detection because he's "lucky" and that Lebel is incompetent. The possibility that Lebel is competent, but the Jackal is ''also'' really good at his job doesn't occur to them.
** Also averted in that half the OAS's problems are because the Police are too good. Their operations and cells are penetrated and blown and in real life would be dismantled very soon after. The Jackal is an act of desperation because any other option would be detected and thwarted before they could try it.
*** There is also a mild OffscreenMomentOfAwesome when Lebel reports the results of a records check. In the ten previous years they've had to contend with four contract killers. They got three of them and they know who the other one was but he's doing life in Africa. That's a 75% catch rate (with the only failure being due to ''someone else arresting the guy first'') and a 100% detection rate and offers an early indication of just how hard the Jackal must work to evade the authorities.

[[quoteright:219:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The-Day-of-the-Jackal_1627.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:219:The plot.]]

Forysth wrote the book in ''35 days'' in 1970 (drawing heavily on his experiences as a journalist in France in the early 1960s); after several rejections, it was published the following year. It was [[TheFilmOfTheBook adapted into a 1973 film]] directed by Fred Zinnemann, starring Creator/EdwardFox (of the Fox acting dynasty) as the Jackal and Creator/MichaelLonsdale as Lebel.

Forysth wrote the book in ''35 days'' in 1970 (drawing heavily on his experiences as a journalist in France in the early 1960s); after several rejections, it was published the following year. It was [[TheFilmOfTheBook adapted into a 1973 film]] directed by Fred Zinnemann, starring Creator/EdwardFox (of the Fox acting dynasty) as the Jackal and Creator/MichaelLonsdale as Lebel; Creator/DelphineSeyrig and Creator/DerekJacobi appear in small parts. The 1973 film adaptation holds us for nearly two and a half hours as we watch as the Jackal's plans proceed with inexorable precision, as Lebel struggles to thwart a man of whom he knows nothing: no name, no picture, no nationality. He isn't even sure if the plot is real or simply the ravings of a tortured terrorist. To make matters worse, the terrorists have infiltrated the French Cabinet, and the Jackal is being passed valuable information about the pursuit. After the members of the cabinet tire of Lebel using the authority they granted him to find the cabinet member who is leaking information, they essentially fire him, thinking they can find the Jackal easily enough. When that doesn't work, they reluctantly call Lebel back, in desperation, because the Jackal has eventually disappeared, and they need to find him before he carries out the assassination.

!!The 1973 film provides examples of:

[[folder:Tropes A-Z]]
* AdaptationDistillation:
** While on the whole an extremely faithful adaptation, the filmmakers streamline the novel, cutting most of the historical and political backstory (especially marginalizing the [=OAS=] leaders, who have a much more prominent role in the novel, and omitting the subplot about British officials' reluctance to help de Gaulle) and several subplots (including the aforementioned scenes with the Unione Corse) and minor characters to make for a more efficient narrative.
** The OAS courier who gets snatched, Viktor Wolenski (originally Viktor Kowalski), doesn't get lured to France by a forged letter to be extracted. Here, Action Service simply does a milk run where they snatch him off the street and smuggle him out of Italy--basically copying another abduction mentioned in the book where an OAS figure was kidnapped from Germany.
* AdaptationExpansion:
** A very small one, in the book the Jackal disguises his car registration by flipping over the plates and painting on a forged fictional number. In the movie we briefly see him steal a set (along with its registration card) off a Peugeot.
** In the novel Lebel pays a discreet visit to the hotel where the Jackal stayed. In the movie it's cordoned off and searched by armed police, and Lebel is shown interrogating the staff and the woman the Jackal slept with.
* AdaptationalJerkass: In the novel, the Interior Minister admires Lebel's professionalism and efficiency and defends him against Colonel St. Clair and others on the council. In the movie, he holds Lebel in thinly-veiled contempt and treats him with icy politeness throughout the film.
* AdaptationNameChange: Viktor Kowalski is renamed Viktor Wolenski.
* AfterActionVillainAnalysis: Subverted. At the end of the film, after the Jackal's funeral, Mallinson and Inspector Thomas discuss the villain they spent the movie pursuing, and concede that he will remain a RiddleForTheAges:
-->'''Insp. Thomas:''' But if the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?
* AluminumChristmasTrees: The i.d. forger who foolishly attempts to blackmail the Jackal, repeatedly sniffles and rubs his nose. When movies used to be forbidden to show cocaine being snorted onscreen or even say the word cocaine, they used these gestures as code for cocaine taking.
* BlownAcrossTheRoom: To save himself from being shot, Lebel grabs the fallen gendarme's machine gun in desperation, and the bullets splash his target spread-eagle into the wall.
* CastingGag: OAS adjutant Wolenski is played by Jean Martin, better-known as Colonel Mathieu from ''Film/TheBattleOfAlgiers''.
* ContrivedCoincidence: A deliberate plot point. When the British Home Office's investigation into the Jackal's identity hits a dead end, the official asks the Foreign Office if they might have encountered anyone who fits the limited description of the hired assassin. The Foreign Office official brings up a "'''Cha'''rles '''Cal'''throp", and adds that "Cha-Cal" forms the French word for "Jackal". The Home official's "Are you serious?" look speaks volumes.
* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler:Colonel St. Clair, who simply resigns in the book after being exposed, commits suicide by sleeping pills.]]
* EverybodySmokes: Everywhere like chimneys, being set in 1963.
* {{Foil}}: The dishelved and overly chatty and inquisitive i.d. forger is contrasted to the tidy, disciplined, and quietly unassuming gunsmith.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: About a half hour into the movie, we see the Jackal in a street market shopping for the clothes and medals he'll use for his "one-legged veteran" disguise to get past the gendarmes in the climax.
** Before this, we see the Jackal observing Pere Lundqvist in Heathrow Airport, before stealing his passport. This is the second identity he's going to use once he gets into France.
** Also an example that could only be used in the movie, [[spoiler: we see the Jackal's flat very early on and Calthrop's bedsit a little later. They look nothing alike, giving an early hint that Calthrop is not actually the Jackal.]]
** While the Jackal is working in his flat, the camera pans briefly over the papers on his desk. A brochure can be seen in the corner, advertising the Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, a small Italian sports car. The Jackal eventually travels to Italy, and actually decides to hire a Spider for himself. He continues to use the car for most of the rest of the movie, [[spoiler:even specially modifying it to carry his unique weapon, before repainting it to avoid detection. He only abandons the car after he crashes it due to the mental fatigue caused by his constant attempts to evade the police. ]]
* GilliganCut: Bastien-Thiery telling his lawyer "No French soldier will raise his rifle against me." Cut to his execution by firing squad.
* {{Gorn}}: Implied. The Jackal tests his rifle by shooting at a watermelon with a face painted on it. After getting the sights straight with plain bullets, he tries one of the explosive bullets, and red pulp splatters everywhere. That is going to happen to someone's ''head''.
* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse:
** The i.d. forger stupidly blabs to the Jackal without prodding that no one else knows and that only he knows where he hid the incriminating evidence on the Jackal and only he can access it.
** The Jackal's lover inadvertently lets the Jackal know that, no, they have not told the police that they noticed the Jackal's face on TV.
* HeavySleeper: One humorous scene reveals Lebel to be this. After trying to wake him up via talking and opening the window to let some light in, his wife resorts to picking up his leg by his big toe.
* HollywoodSilencer: Averted because the ammunition is small caliber, probably .22; the ammunition is apparently subsonic, it takes a very noticeable time from shot to the impact even though the target is only 120 meters / 400 feet out; the chamber is closed, with no openings before the suppressor and the muzzle; and the noise that remains is a distinct "'''thump'''", but that would be completely drowned out by the noise and commotion of the ceremony anyway.
* LaserGuidedKarma: Having spent his career hiding and faking his identity everywhere, after being killed the Jackal ends up buried in a cheap coffin in an unmarked pauper's grave with only Inspector Lebel observing the burial, as a voiceover explains that authorities could find absolutely nothing about his true identity.
* LonelyFuneral: The only person to attend the Jackal's funeral is Lebel, for whom it is not an act of mourning, but an act of closure to put a stopper on the case.
* MasterOfDisguise: The Jackal disguises himself to fit the false passports he's created (though in the book it's the forger who advises the Jackal on how to do this).
** Actually downplayed in the movie, where the Jackal tells the forger he's not good at makeup. His disguises mainly consist of dyed hair and glasses (for Lundquist) and dyed hair and a strapped-up leg (for the one-legged soldier), with appropriate clothing for each.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: The English actors playing French characters, mostly noticeable when they play scenes opposite actual French actors.
* OhCrap: The Jackal's lover has seen their new house guest's face all over TV and not bothered to find out what that was about. They go home, inform said house guest that their face is on TV, turns on TV, and gets to hear the reason. See TooDumbToLive below.
* PracticeTargetOverkill: The Jackal takes his custom-made sniper rifle to a remote wooded area to test it and to align its scope. This needs only two standard rifle bullets fired into a melon in a mesh tote bag, as the gunsmith had already tested it and tweaked the sights. Then comes one of the vaned, mercury bullets: the melon disintegrates and the tote was left in tatters.
* RewindReplayRepeat: The Action Service intelligence analysts are shown doing this as they transcribe Wolenski's torture interrogation.
* RiddleForTheAges: The Jackal's true identity:
-->'''Insp. Thomas:''' But if the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell was he?
%%* ShirtlessScene: Quite a few. '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample -- who takes off their shirt and why?'''
* ShootTheBuilder: Zigzagged. The Jackal visits a gunsmith and a forger in preparation for his mission. He kills [[spoiler:the forger]] [[BlackmailBackfire for trying to blackmail him]], but never considers doing the same thing to the [[spoiler:gunsmith]]. However, it's mentioned that [[spoiler:the gunsmith]] has hidden evidence of his various criminal dealings, so that any client who ''does'' decide to shoot the builder will get an unwelcome visit from the police.
* SourceMusic: Opening narrative or at least the last part of it is apparently spoken by a newsman on the radio OAS members are listening to.
* TalkingInBed: How the OAS get their information out of Colonel St. Clair.
* TranslationConvention: Everyone speaks English at all times, regardless of nationality or context.
* TooDumbToLive:
** The i.d. forger attempts to blackmail the Jackal by meeting him completely privately instead of in public, and blabs away that no one else can find the incriminating evidence. The guy's a cocaine snorter so it's apparent why his judgment was stupidly awful.
** The Jackal has gone into hiding by picking up a lover and living in with them for a while. The lover sees their new house guest's face all over TV, but does '''not''' stop to think "I wonder what that is all about?", and instead goes right back home and informs the guest that their face is all over TV, with a jovial carefree air that lets the Jackal know that the police has not been informed about this. Then they turn on TV and get to hear what the hubbub is actually about. OhCrap moment and inevitability ensues.
* TruthInTelevision: The attack on De Gaulle's motorcade at the film's beginning happened very much as shown. Despite unleashing with machine-guns and De Gaulle's Citroën-DS limo hit by multiple bullets -- even through the windows -- the gunmen failed to hit anyone in the group (including the motorcycle escorts) and the motorcade sped away safely and directly to the airport.
* TheVoiceless: De Gaulle, who's always seen in crowds or long distance (unlike the book where he's a more substantial presence).
* WantedPoster: Once Lebel knows that the Jackal is in Paris and under what identity, he sends out bulletins and broadcasts naming that alias as a suspect in the murder of a woman the Jackal killed under a previous identity. Unfortunately for the police, the one person to see the broadcasts who knows the Jackal goes to him and asks why his face is on the telly instead of calling the police, tipping the Jackal off that it's time to switch to a new identity.
* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The gunsmith, who disappears after the Jackal picks up his rifle. The movie excises a scene from the novel where the Jackal visits the gunsmith a third time, possibly to silence him, and the latter reveals he's collected incriminating evidence that will be released to the authorities should the Jackal murder him.
* WithholdingTheirName: The title character assumes several identities over the course of the story, but we never learn his real name and only a few hints about his background. Much of the plot hinges on a RedHerring, with investigators [[spoiler:assuming he's another man (Charles Calthrop) with shady ties to international arms dealers]].
[[/folder]]

* FearlessFool: Charles [=DeGaulle=] is too ballsy for his own good. His EstablishingCharacterMoment is being cool during the assassination attempt of the prologue and even complaining that the men who tried to kill him had bad aim. As the investigation continues, the man keeps complaining about people asking him to do some change, ''any'' change, to his lifestyle to try to confuse the assassin (and insists the investigation be kept secret to prevent embarrassment). [[spoiler:The Jackal's plan almost gets executed to perfection because [=DeGaulle=] absolutely refuses to not do his duties on Liberation Day.]]

* AssInAmbassador: Sir Jasper Quigley, the British Foreign Office's "Head of France", is considered qualified for his job by a lengthy career of diplomatic postings to several countries ''other'' than France, coupled with a healthy disregard and dislike for the French people in general and De Gaulle in particular.

* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday: The whole plot becomes a RaceAgainstTheClock once the French figure out that the Jackal will make his move on Liberation Day, with the climax taking place on that day. The fact that the hit is targeted for a major event is justified by the fact that unlike a random simple Tuesday, De Gaulle's schedule on a major holiday cannot be casually altered at the last minute for security reasons.

* FearlessFool: Charles [=DeGaulle=] is too ballsy for his own good. His EstablishingCharacterMoment is being cool during the assassination attempt of the prologue and even complaining that the men who tried to kill him had bad aim. As the investigation continues, the man keeps complaining about people asking him to do some change, ''any'' change, to his lifestyle to try to confuse the assassin (and insists the investigation be kept secret to prevent embarrassment). [[spoiler:The Jackal's plan almost gets executed to perfection because [=DeGaulle=] absolutely refuses to not do his duties on Bastille Day.]]

* HorrorDoesntSettleForSimpleTuesday: The whole plot becomes a RaceAgainstTheClock once the French figure out that the Jackal will make his move on Bastille Day, with the climax taking place on that day. The fact that the hit is targeted for a major event is justified by the fact that unlike a random simple Tuesday, De Gaulle's schedule on a major holiday cannot be casually altered at the last minute for security reasons.

* MysteriousPast: Much of the Jackal's past is only hinted at. [[spoiler:What country did he come from? How did he gain his deadly skills? Did he really take part in the assassination of President Trujillo, or was that also a RedHerring? We never find out.]]

* NoNameGiven: [[spoiler: We never find out the real name of the Jackal. Lampshaded by the final line of dialogue: "If the Jackal wasn't Calthrop, then who the hell ''was'' he?!"]] The gunsmith and forger are also unnamed.

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Just barely averted. Jackal never tells anyone more about his plans than absolutely necessary (The OAS knows who the target is, but not when, where or how it is to be done. The gunsmith knows how the hit is to be done, but not who, when or where. Nobody else knows anything until Lebel starts deducing details), and comes within inches of succeeding. [[spoiler:Had De Gaulle not bent over as Jackal was lining up his first shot and Lebel not intervened before he could fire a second, it would have worked]].

* WorthyOpponent: Lebel and the Jackal (Chacal in French) develop a grudging respect for each other, without ever meeting -- with the Jackal again and again evading Lebel's clever traps and Lebel again and again penetrating the Jackal's clever disguises. Lebel certainly appreciates the Jackal far higher then he does the government officials he has to work with. When they at last meet face to face they look for a split second into each other's eyes, Lebel saying "Chacal" and the Jackal saying "Lebel" before they scramble to kill each other. Lebel having been a split second quicker, he on the following day attends the Jackal's burial in a nameless grave, saying nothing to the handful of other people present.

* BoringButPractical: Lebel eschews fancy espionage tradecraft in favor of simply looking at the case deeper than the other guys. In fact, this is exactly how he catches the Jackal: During the Liberation Day parade, he goes around the security cordon and asks the gendarmes one by one until he stumbles upon one guard who let in a guy who fits the Jackal's profile.