Growing up, I was aware of Eye of the Needle in a vague sort of way. My parents had it on VHS and described Donald Sutherland’s performance in it as chilling. We never watched it together. Dad could be a little prudish about R-rated movies with sexual content; when he showed me The Godfather as a teenager, I remember that he had me cover my eyes when Sonny Corleone has sex with Lucy Mancini. I assume he did the same for Michael and Apollonia’s wedding night. Shortly before his death, and relevant to this review, Dad expressed his discomfort with Return of the Jedi’s treatment of Princess Leia in Jabba’s palace.
Richard Marquand directed Eye of the Needle, and apparently impressed George Lucas enough to be offered the job on Return of the Jedi. He made only three more features before dying of a stroke in 1987 at the young age of 49, following the troubled production of Hearts of Fire. Inevitably he’s remembered for Return of the Jedi, though as with Irvin Kershner and The Empire Strikes Back there’s an asterisk and the inevitable questions of who did what on the production. The difference is that Kershner died in 2010 at the age of 87, and anyone who’s listened to the commentary tracks for Empire recognizes Kershner’s enormous contributions to the finished product. By comparison, Marquand remains an enigma.
Eye of the Needle is a Ken Follett adaptation, and as of 2024 the only feature release. I haven’t read the source novel, published in 1978. The story is set in the United Kingdom during World War II. There is a prologue of sorts in 1940, with the main action in 1944. There are two primary point-of-view characters: Faber, a German spy undercover in the UK, played by Donald Sutherland; and Lucy, a young recently-married Englishwoman, played by Kate Nelligan.
The prologue introduces our two characters. We establish Faber as cold and ruthless, capable of exchanging pleasantries with a person in one moment and murdering them the next. We meet Lucy and her husband David (Christopher Cazenove) on the day of their wedding. David is a fighter pilot, arrogant and gung-ho. Before the day is out Lucy and David are in car accident, brought about by David’s arrogance. When we meet them again in 1944, David is a bitter drunk confined to a wheelchair. He, Lucy, and their young son Jo are sheep farmers on the fictional Storm Island in the Hebrides (filmed on location on Mull), and the love has gone out of the marriage.
Faber, meanwhile, has discovered vital intelligence about the forthcoming invasion of Normandy and must deliver that intelligence directly to Hitler. He must rendezvous with a U-boat off a remote part of the Scottish coast. He makes his way north, pursued by a police inspector (Ian Bannen) and leaving a trail of bodies. He steals a ship and unwisely sails into a storm, and finds himself shipwrecked on Storm Island and a surprise guest of Lucy and David.
There are only five characters on the island: Faber, Lucy, David, Jo, and Tom (Alex McCrindle), the perpetually drunk keeper of the lighthouse. The sense of isolation is palpable. Faber recognizes Lucy’s loneliness and frustration immediately, and romance develops. These scenes are handled exceptionally well; we believe Lucy’s vulnerability and desperation. Sutherland is charming as Faber; we never know if he actually loves Nelligan or is pursuing the romance in furtherance of his mission. Does he know himself?
Faber’s goal remains the same as before: rendezvous with the U-boat, deliver information about Normandy to his superiors in Nazi Germany. The only two-way radio on the island is in the care of the drunken Tom. Faber and David visit the lighthouse on a pretext. David doesn’t like Faber; not because he necessarily suspects, but because David doesn’t like anybody, least of all himself. Rooting through Faber’s possessions, David finds photographs that Faber shot of Allied airfields. David confronts him, and after a struggle Faber throws him off a cliff and he drowns. Faber subsequently murders Tom in the course of contacting the U-boat. Faber lies to Lucy that David and Tom are having a long drinking session, a lie that Lucy easily accepts.
The next morning, Lucy and Jo are out for a walk and discover David’s body. Horrified, Lucy returns home to get help but crucially, before she can tell Faber what’s happened, Faber tells her that her husband refuses to return home. Faber’s maintaining the lie and covering for that fact that both David and Tom are dead. Nelligan’s facial expressions as she realizes some of the truth of what’s happened are incredible. She withholds this knowledge from Faber and continues the relationship, all the while planning a way to save herself and Jo. This sets the stage for a climax in the rain, as Faber attempts to get his information off the island and Lucy, finally realizing the whole truth, attempts to stop him.
Eye of the Needle has a running time of 1 hour 48 minutes. The prologue is an efficient nine minutes. A bedraggled Faber collapses on Lucy’s doorstep at the 49-minute mark. This is when the film really kicks into high gear. I think we take too long to get here, and meet too many characters who don’t contribute enough to justify their inclusion. This is the fault of the screenplay, and a risk for a literary adaptation. A certain amount of ruthlessness is necessary, especially for a sub-2 hour running time. We spend time with Ian Bannen’s inspector and his investigation, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. All the crucial scenes are between Sutherland and Nelligan.
The courtship between the two is swift, but not implausibly so. We’ve established that Lucy and David’s marriage has failed. One wonders what it would have been like if David hadn’t had the accident and wasn’t killed in the war. Lucy is unhappy, but has no opportunity to act on it. Faber’s arrival changes that. In a crucial early scene after his arrival, Lucy and Jo are in the bath together. Lucy gets out first, and before she can cover herself, accidentally reveals herself to Faber through the open door. They share a meaningful stare, but nothing is said. Was this really an accident, on either person’s part? In later scenes we can see that Lucy is genuinely happy to have someone talk to who isn’t bitter, a drunk, or both. Faber is charming and attractive. The pain of the betrayal, coupled with the realization of genuine danger, is real.
Sutherland and Nelligan give outstanding performances in this. I’ve already talked about Nelligan. Sutherland is James Bond without the jokes. It’s not that he’s a ruthless killer one minute and a charming presence the next–it’s that he’s always a ruthless killer, and the charming presence is just part of the affect. Much of the tension on the island comes from the knowledge that Sutherland could–and does–kill at any moment, without remorse. Would he have killed Nelligan? I think so. Would he have regretted it afterwards? Maybe, but the mission came first.
I liked this quite a bit, but I wish the screenplay had the courage to drop some of the extraneous scenes and focus on the island. Alan Hume’s cinematography is gorgeous, and Marquand’s direction seems more confident as the scope narrows.