(1976) In early 1939, taking aim through the scope of a high-powered rifle from the woods on the outskirts of a German country estate where Adolph Hitler, Eva Braun, and others of the Third Reich's high command are about to sit down to an outdoors dinner party, Sir Robert Thorndyke (Peter O'Toole) botches the shot intended to pot the Fuhrer when he's tackled by a member of the Gestapo.

Captured, tortured (cigar in the eye and fingernails removed), and interrogated - "Who sent you?" - a bloodied Sir Robert denies being an agent of the British service: "I'm a free individual. I came on my own."

Because his uncle the Earl (Alastair Sims) is a close friend of the German ambassador to England, the Germans are careful to stage an elaborate scenario to convince anyone of Sir Robert's demise as an accident while hunting boar, a precipitous fall from a steep cliff while scraping off his fingernails. Plunging what appears to be a few hundred feet without breaking his fall, Sir Robert somehow manages to survive without breaking any bones, crawling away ("gone to ground") to escape the Gestapo.

As if that weren't amazing enough, the battered and bruised English aristocrat happens upon a man fishing, who not only speaks English but willingly (expressing his disgust with the Nazis as "scum") befriends Sir Robert ("Sorry to spoil your sport"), bringing him fresh clothing, gloves, and refreshment, along with giving the fugitive his boat with a fishing rod to row 50 miles to the outlet.

At the sea port, Sir Robert just happens upon a pair of British sailors, who direct him to a vessel where Mr Vaner agrees to hide him in the hull until they're safely back in England. "Well, I dare say," says Vaner in farewell, "your troubles are now over, sir." That's hardly the case in director Clive Donner's adaptation of Geoffrey Household's thriller novel by way of Frederic Raphael's screenplay of a man with "addled ideas of duty and honor."

Meeting with his uncle in a steam bath, Sir Robert, after explaining his precarious situation of being followed, asks for advice. Pointing out that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is "furious," the Earl at first flippantly remarks: "I'm a member of the government. How should I know what people should do?" Next by way of admonishment, he says to his nephew that if the German government were to request his extradition, he could be sent back in chains: "Bobbity, you see, shooting heads of state is never in season. Even if they are jumped-up corporals, they are protected, like ospreys. So you know what you are, Bobbity - you're an outlaw!"

After a visit with his Jewish legal advisor Saul Abrahams (Harold Pinter) - "What have you been up to?" to which Sir Robert explains about taking a crack at Hitler: "You know why, Saul. No one else does, but you do. Rebecca" - who provides money, Sir Robert literally goes underground in Cattistock, Dorset.

Wounded and then trapped by the interrogator (not a German: "I am as English as you are") in dogged but patient pursuit of his quarry - catch your mouse, then give him the cheese - Maj Quive-Smith (John Standing) insists: "You and I belong on the same side." Sir Robert, who's half Irish, spits back: "Don't assume that because we both go to a good tailor we're on the same side. We are not." An elephant, a wounded beast, separated from the herd is a renegade male.

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