Rogue Male (1976 film)

Plot

In early 1939, before the start of the Second World War, Sir Robert Hunter (O'Toole) takes aim at Adolf Hitler with a high-powered rifle, but misses when he is spotted and tackled by an SS guard. Captured and tortured by the Gestapo, he is then left for dead, but manages to make his way back to England where, to his shock, he discovers the Gestapo has followed him. Believing that the government would, in all likelihood, turn him over to German authorities, Sir Robert goes underground (literally) to escape his pursuers.

Cast

Production

The story had been previously filmed in 1941 by Fritz Lang as Man Hunt, with Walter Pidgeon in the lead role.

According to producer Mark Shivas, script editor Richard Broke had the idea of making six TV movie thrillers for the BBC which showed the changing nature of the British hero from 1918 to 1939, with Rogue Male to be the last. Shivas was then working on an adaptation of The Glittering Prizes with writer Frederic Raphael and commissioned Raphael to adapt Rogue Male. Raphael went back to the original novel and ignored the 1941 film version. Shivas felt there were three things any version of Rogue Male had to have: the attempted assassination of Hitler at the beginning of the story, the chase on the London Underground, and the battle underground at the end. Filming took 25 days and involved 29 locations. (Shivas would make two other in the series, She Fell Among Thieves and The Three Hostages.)

Interviewed by the Radio Times for the first screening of the film, Household explicitly acknowledged that he always intended the protagonist's target to be Hitler: "Although the idea for Rogue Male germinated from my intense dislike of Hitler, I did not actually name him in the book as things were a bit tricky at the time and I thought I would leave it open so that the target could be either Hitler or Stalin. You could take your pick."

Some of the filming took place around King's Stag in Dorset and, notably, around the "Green Man" pub.

In an interview with Francine Stock for BBC Radio 4's Film Programme in 2007, Peter O'Toole named this film as his favourite from his long career.