Great Climbing; Terrible Plot
Clint Eastwood has starred in many great movies. The Eiger Sanction isn’t one of them.
Roger Ebert’s review read: “It has a plot…that we can’t believe…for much more than 15 seconds at a time, but its action sequences are so absorbing and its mountaintop photography so compelling that we don’t care…”
Eastwood learned to climb for the movie. He did all his climbing, even under dangerous conditions. Special equipment and handheld cameras were used to film the climbing sequences. Those sequences make the movie.
Like most 70s movies, don’t expect enlightened attitudes regarding race and gender.
The (Thin) Plot
Dr Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is an art professor and former government assassin. He is blackmailed out of retirement for one more “sanction” (assassination).
The target is someone on a team climbing the murderous north face of the Eiger Mountain in the Swiss Alps. It’s 5,900 vertical feet of the most challenging and deadly rock and ice in all the Alps. At least 64 climbers have died attempting the north face.
Hemlock’s only clue is that the man walks with a limp. He must determine his target and assassinate him during the climb.
He prepares by going to Arizona’s Monument Valley for training with his old climbing buddy Ben Bowman (George Kennedy). “Graduation” from training consists of Hemlock and Bowman climbing the incredibly difficult 18-foot diameter, 640-foot-high Totem rock spire in the Valley.
Who Brought the Beer?
The scene when they reach the top is a classic. They are sitting on top of the Totem, miles from anywhere.
Bowman: “Wanna beer?”
Hemlock: (Hemlock looks at Bowman as if he’s nuts) “You gonna call room service?”
Bowman: “We got beer.”
Hemlock: “You haul beer up this rock, you’re insane.”
Bowman: (Reaches into Hemlock’s backpack and pulls out some beers) “I may be insane but I’m not stupid. I didn’t carry it, you did, in your pack!”
Hemlock: (Takes a beer) “Christ, I oughta throw you off this pillar – besides, it’s warm.”
Bowman: “I’m sorry, I thought you’d draw the line at haulin’ ice.”
The Totem
The Totem has religious significance to the Navajo. The crew was allowed to film only if they removed pitons and other climbing hardware embedded in the structure by previous climbers. Eastwood’s crew restored the monolith to pristine condition, and no one has climbed it since.
The Shot
I saw the Totem for the first time in December on my Monument Valley trip. We arrived for a dawn shoot. Instead of a closeup, we framed the distant Totem between a tree and the rising sun.
I knew I had to have a beer that evening with dinner. A cold one.
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus