Development Film rights to the novel were purchased by Paramount Pictures. In 1969,
Frank Sinatra was recruited to star in the film, but he withdrew from the project. Eventually
Robert Evans, head of Paramount, offered the project to the team of
Peter Yates and
Michael Deeley, who had made
Robbery for the studio. Deeley says a script had already been written by Stirling Silliphant, who worked on subsequent drafts with Yates. Silliphant later recalled: Our purpose was to make a flat-out statement about the absurdity, the meaninglessness, of war. So we went for minimal sound, minimal dialogue, a kind of intense fumbling toward death, toward the showdown between enemies who have no further reason for enmity except the blind stupidity and vengefulness of the Peter O’Toole character. And this is why, at the end, in a high angle shot director Peter Yates closed out the film with the sub sinking, the barge sinking, and the river surging above both, covering them for all eternity. Over this he shot a ragged flight of jungle birds, wheeling off, the only survivors of this pointless encounter between men and their machines. Yates said that he was particularly interested in "the way in which three people—Murphy, a doctor and a Frenchman left in the backwash of war—are really brought together by circumstance and how each character plays on the other and makes them do things that they wish they hadn't and things they sometimes feel proud of." Eventually Paramount agreed to provide half of film's financing in exchange for world-distribution rights. The other half of the budget came from London Screenplays, a finance company from Dimitri de Grunwald. The lead role was given to Peter O'Toole for a fee of $250,000. A number of other stars had turned it down including Warren Beatty, Robert Redford and Lee Marvin. His female co-star was his real-life wife
Siân Phillips. The couple had appeared together in the 1964 film
Becket and the 1969 musical film
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. O'Toole wanted to play an Irishman so the script was rewritten accordingly.
Production Filming began on 23 February 1970 and was completed with location shooting in
Malta on 5 July. Filming occurred at locations in the regions of
Puerto Ordaz and Castillos de Guayana on the
Orinoco River in
Venezuela, and on set at
Pinewood Studios,
Iver Heath and
Twickenham Film Studios,
Middlesex, England. Deeley described the shoot as the toughest of his career, which led to the breakup of his partnership with Yates, with whom he had made several films. For the scenes filmed in Malta that depict the burning of the merchant ship, O'Toole swam through water afire with oil and with explosives detonating all around him. He later said: "I used to do all my own stunts when I first started. I made it a principle. Everything in
Lawrence of Arabia I did myself. But after suffering a paralyzed hand, a bad back, broken ankle and countless knocks, I decided never again. It was stupid. Films employ stunt men (for a reason!). They can do these things far better than I. I refused to do any more stunts. [Then] I thought, well, just one more time. So I talked myself into it. In Venezuela I even fly a seaplane. If you want to see a picture of sheer terror have a look at the shots of me when I first fly that seaplane." Deeley viewed the film as an action adventure, and says he wanted O'Toole's character to live at the end of the film but Yates insisted he die and to make the film more of an anti-war statement. Several of the sequences were photographed by
cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, including the scenes with Murphy piloting the floatplane and the visuals along the Orinoco River. Especially notable is an airborne shot of a flock of
scarlet ibises in flight along the shore of the river during the closing credits. For the extensive flying scene with many shots of the floatplane stalling and veering sharply to avoid obstacles, a camera was strapped to the wing of the aircraft. Several
Peace Corps volunteers serving in towns near the Orinoco River were recruited to play Nazi submariners. The volunteers donated their daily wages to the Venezuelan school districts or other organizations with which they were working. The
Type IX U-boat was represented by the
Venezuelan Navy's ARV
Carite (S-11); this was the former , which had been sold to Venezuela in 1960 (the submarine is far taller than a wartime U-boat, and its single gun position behind the conning tower makes it look like a
Type VII U-boat). The floating crane was a former World War II
tank landing craft. The
OA-12 Duck used in the film was restored and flown by
Frank Tallman and is on display at the
National Museum of the United States Air Force at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Dayton, Ohio. In the original book, the aircraft was a
Fairey Swordfish. ==Release==