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  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent

    TwoFour said:

    But what I questioned at once is your claim that Indy's leading ladies in both the previous movies were weepy. Seriously - Marion Raven weepy

    ________________________________________

    @TwoFour is correct: the two female leads could not be more different. I happened to catch the last half hour of Raiders and the first half hour of Temple this weekend when I was watching cable at my mum's house so the contrast was crystal clear. Karen Allen is introduced winning a drinking contest, she is a ruff tuff self-reliant outdoorsy woman of action.

    She is also Katy, Boone's girlfriend from Animal House, and thus the dream girl of nerds and slobs everywhere, The Perfect Woman.


    speaking of John Belushi movies: that opening sequence in Temple of Doom is similar to the USO Dance Hall sequence in 1941. Spielberg has a talent for these WWII period musical productions degenerating into chaos, was there perhaps a similar scene in Saving Private Ryan to complete the trilogy?

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    That makes sense. But it's well inside the level of inaccuracy one can allow in a movie, especially in this genre.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    In other news Mission Impossible 8 was supposed to start three weeks of filming this week on Svalbard, but was denied by the Svalbard Shire to protect the local wildlife.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    GREMLINS (1984)

    I hadn’t seen this since it was first released and I had forgotten how violent it was, considering the target young audience. An inventor purchases a strange animal from a Chinatown antique store as a gift to his son for Christmas. There are certain rules to maintain such as avoiding water and not eating after midnight which are, of course, accidentally broken causing an outbreak of vicious gremlins to be unleashed. Zach Galligan stars as the son and his insipid performance underlines the paucity of his later career. Hoyt Axton as the father is good and we are treated to some of his inventions which always go wrong. A couple of actors from Beverly Hills Cop turn up and it’s always good to see horror film stalwart Dick Miller.

    Director Joe Dante keeps things running at a fast pace and it’s nice to see some classic movies being played on televisions in the background. The town set looks similar to what would be used in Back To The Future.

    Not as good as I remembered, but still worth a look.

    6/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    You won't be able to see the Harry Palmer double bill tomorrow night, @chrisno1 - ITV4 is showing The Man With The Golden Gun at the same time.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Lady RoseLady Rose London,UKPosts: 2,667MI6 Agent

    Operation Mincemeat.

    Really enjoyed this film. I wasn't in a position to compare it to the Man Who Never Was but my Dad was and he said he preferred the new version because there was a lot more information in it. I suppose a lot more has come out since records have been released.

    Great turn By Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen was excellent. I really like Macfadyen as an actor.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    The bridges of Madison County (1995)

    Earlier this winter I saw "White Hunter, black heart" and I enjoyed watching Clint Eastwood going outside his comfort zone as a director and actor. That's why I now watched Bridges of ...", a romantic drama where he co-stars with Meryl Streep. She plays an Italian-born housewife with a husband and two children back in the 1960's who falls in love with Eastwood's National Geographic photographer who takes photos of said bridges. This happens during a few days while her family are away.

    In the present day (1990's) her two now adult children are given her will that said she wants her ashes to be spread from the bridge Eastwood and Streep's characters spent time twenty years earlier. Their discovery of the mother's secret affair works as a framing device.

    As always Meryl Streep delivers a great performance, but Eastwood is able to match her pretty well. As far as I know this is the only example of a movie directed by and staring Eastwood where his leading lady is also a star.

    I like his directing job in an unfamiliar genere. The story of mature and socially unacceptable love is engaging and it's shot well. This is an unusual, but worthwhile movie by Clint Eastwood.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967)

    Lee Marvin leads a big cast including Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland and Jim Brown on a mission behind enemy lines. The Dozen are all prisoners with death sentences and the lure of remission of the sentences provide them with the impetus to complete the impossible mission. Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and George Kennedy are amongst the officers planning the mission.

    The first half of the film concerns the selection of the dozen and their training. The second half is where we see the mission in action. Director Robert Aldrich manages to control the vast cast of big names all vying to get their share of screen time. It’s rough, tough and exciting - a perfect movie to watch with a cold beer and hot pizza.

    7/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    It’s available on Amazon Prime so I’ll give it a look as I haven’t seen it 👍🏻

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE (1959)

    I have a liking for the Edgar Rice Burroughs jungle hero and the series of movies were regularly shown on British TV when I was a kid. Producer Sy Weintraub had bought the franchise from long-standing Tarzan producer Sol Lesser and this was his first production for the series. He kept Gordon Scott in the role from the previous four films and added a strong cast including Anthony Quayle and our own Sean Connery. Eschewing the comedy aspects of previous films Weintraub made Tarzan a more hardened character, as in the books. Directed by the capable John Guillermin this one sees Tarzan tracking down a bunch of mercenaries who have stolen explosives to excavate diamonds from a secret mine.

    This is my favourite movie of the series, Connery is a standout villain and Quayle gives a strong performance as the leader. Gordon Scott is obviously relishing his newfound version of Tarzan and the whole thing works wonderfully.

    8/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    The Protectors (2017)

    This is short and a VR movie, so I guess that's two firsts for this thread. I was curious about what Kathrine Bigelow is up to these days and I found this gem. It's about the rangers in a national park in Kenya. Their job is a lot more dramatic than most park rangers. The park is in a war zone and guerillas who often have committed war crimes are poaching elephants and other wildlife for profit. The rangers carry AKs and are often in firefights. These are very brave people. The movie is VR, so point the smartphone in the direction you want to see.

    The movie (about ten minutes): https://www.google.com/search?q=the+protectors+national+geographic&source=lmns&bih=969&biw=1920&rlz=1C1VDKB_noNO1030NO1030&hl=no&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQwtbY6-L9AhUCsCoKHVuABfIQ_AUoAHoECAEQAA#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:d8d00ed1,vid:RuGeeGRdYlQ



  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent

    TwoFour said

    This is short and a VR movie, so I guess that's two firsts for this thread

    ______________________________________________

    not the first short! I once filed a report on a series of mail order super8 films Diana Rigg made in 1969

    but I grant you first VR, I'm not sure I even know what that is

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    I'll spend the weekend getting over the fact that The Protectors isn' short film reviewed here, but as a very nature person I'll be fine with it on Monday.

    What's VR? Watch the movie on your smartphone. You can move the phone and see in any direction. When you hear a helicopter you can hold the phone facing up and see the helicopter. Or, if you feel like it, look at the Rangers around you or even face the phone down and look at the grass.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent
    edited March 2023

    thanks @Number24 I was just being a smartass, didnt really mean to distract from your post

    actually I tried the link on my desktop, it works even without a phone though is very slow. Must be a huge amount of data to download ten minutes in three dimensions

    it opened in youtube, and I could use my cursor to pan round in a circle, following the elephant herd or looking elsewhere across the savannah. very immersive. I'll watch the whole thing later today when I get ten minutes

    I like nature too and illegal poaching is an important issue that doesnt get enough attention. its impressive how National Geographic are using the technology to make the problem more real to the viewer, an evolutionary step from the magazine photography we're all familiar with

  • TonyDPTonyDP Inside the MonolithPosts: 4,279MI6 Agent

    FYI, VR stands for "Virtual Reality". If you watch that video in a virtual reality headset such as the Meta Quest 2 you'll see that the video surrounds you and allows you to literally look around the environment by simply turning your head instead of having to swipe a screen, thus giving you a very immersive experience which is the whole point of VR.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    The Rangers risk their lives for what I suspect are low wages, but for a very good cause.

    I've wanted somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa as a Bond location for years. Having the villain taking part in illegal big game hunting is a good way to establish him/her as a villain, and in a new way in an exotic location.

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,644MI6 Agent
    edited March 2023

    VR sounds like being able to climb inside the cinema or TV screen and explore more of the surroundings than you can see on the screen normally. That's something I've wanted to do with some films and TV episodes I've seen over the years to be honest. Back in March 2016 when I was buying my first smartphone in the Carphone Warehouse I did get a chance to try on a VR headset. I'm sure that the technology has come on leaps and bounds since then though with the advent of Meta etc.

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    I've never seen this one! Connery as a villain, three years before Bond. How did you come by this, @CoolHandBond

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,644MI6 Agent

    I remember taping this film off the TV and watching it years ago, I think some time in the late 1990s. A scene where a villainous character is double crossed and thrown down a casm only to make his way out again and cast his attacker into the the very same casm has stuck in my mind ever since. I'd love to see it again some time. It remains the only Tarzan film I've ever seen and it wasn't bad.

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    Ke Hit Quan (Short Round) just got the Oscars for Best Supporting Actor in "Everything everywhere all at once"

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent
    edited March 2023


    This is a very good Tarzan movie. One of the top three of all time. It works almost like a western in the jungle, with Tarzan in the role of a white-hatted avenging gunslinger, only he wears a loin cloth and carries a bow and arrow. Two great villains in Connery and Quayle.

    I too remember watching Tarzan on television [Friday, BBC2 at 5.40pm, if the memory serves] and over the years I've seen every sound movie, including oddities like the 1959 remake of Tarzan the Ape Man and the Edgar Rice Burroughs produced 1930s serials. While Johnny Weissmuller is forever associated with the role, I agree that Gordon Scott enjoys himself tremendously in his six outings. He brought a more international flavour to the movies, had stronger casts and better directors, coupled with some fine storylines. He also wasn't encumbered with Jane - except for the b/w Tarzan and the Trappers - three unsold TV episodes stitched together as a cash in. Scott was a muscular and intelligent Tarzan. His films paved the way for Jock Mahoney and Mike Henry's underrated sixties films where Tarzan was brought bang up to date and flew around the globe fighting wrongs across the world's jungle realms.

    Thanks for this review.

    I feel a Tarzan marathon coming on...

    As for that kid winning an Oscar, crikey...

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent


    Thanks for the tip! I just finished watching it and I enjoyed it. It was especially interesting to see Connery as a secondary villain just before he became famous. According to IMDB Connery said while making this movie: ""Two fellows took an option on me for some spy picture and are exercising it."

    it was also interesting to watch a scene where Connery's character is hunting Tarzan who's hiding while a big poisonous spider crawls on his shoulder. Not too different from that "spy picture".

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    Now, back to some serious stuff.

    I should really post this in the Harry Palmer thread, although I may need to do a more detailed appreciation for that...

    THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)

    Where to start?

    Michael Caine, perhaps, in a career defining role as Harry Palmer, bringing elements of schoolboy charm to a working class, slightly obnoxious, slightly sarcastic, clever, yet ever-so put-upon spy – “insubordinate, insolent, a trickster with criminal tendencies.”

    John Barry’s music, perhaps, with its memorable theme played out over scenes of Palmer’s domestic life, its jazz notes swaying, a pre-Thunderball score of incidental excellence.

    Sidney J. Furie’s incisive direction, perhaps, almost entirely shot from obscure angles to give us the impression we are clandestinely observing the action – from the floor, below a desk, a bed, a car, through a key hole, chicken wire, a lamp shade, a windscreen, a telephone booth, a spectacle lens, etc, etc – not only is the audience constantly off-balance, they are also prone to the same tensions and intrigues as are played out for the cast – quite possibly one of the most astonishing and consistently puzzling yet satisfying array of viewpoints ever put into a main stream movie.

    Bill Canaway and James Doran’s screenplay which sensibly thins down Len Deighton’s novel and contracts the action into an identifiable, plausible London centric landscape, yet never forgets to present character, place and narrative in every single scene; not a second nor a line is wasted.

    The other-worldly brain-drain plot, perhaps, which isn’t allowed to drown the realism; instead it overarches the street level shenanigans and the villain’s pillars collapse only at the very end – off screen, in fact – after torture and murder and mayhem have elapsed.

    Nigel Green and Guy Doleman, perhaps, as the twin pillars of disgusted authority, whose allegiances seem to sway with Barry’s music and Caine’s affected glances; will Harry Palmer recognise the traitor in time?

    The droll humour, perhaps, not so much witty as overtly observational, drawing on tetchy interpersonal relationships, irritating personality ticks and a crawling dread of anything out of the norm, the waggishness steadfastly refuses to plant jokes just to poke fun at the film itself. 

    Frank Gatliff, perhaps, as Grantby, a.k.a ‘Blue Jay’, the low-key, even mannered, credible and capable villain surrounded by a cohort of much unnamed ugliness.

    Ken Adam’s down-at-heel designs, perhaps, a spare contrast to his usual extravagances, messy, dirty, uninvolving and unobtrusive, here rather than being impressive, they add character, contrast and shape to individual sequences.

    The smallest details, perhaps: Palmer and ‘House Martin’ mirror-imaged walking the balconies of the Science Museum, Palmer removing his specs before a fist-fight, the US agent following ‘Blue Jay’, the backhanded assistance between the Secret Services and the Met Police, Palmer’s disrespect for routine red tape, his spartan domestic arrangements, recipes stuck on cupboard doors, Mozart on the turntable, the plaque for Dalby’s section ironically reading ‘Domestic Employees Bureau’, his secretary endlessly smoking, the colour ‘red’ recurring as a more and more obvious Freudian clue, the days scratched in sevens on a prison cell wall, our introduction to the duplicitous love interest comes over her shoulder – like Cary Grant in Notorious – what is she hiding other than her shapely legs? – and Palmer searches for his automatic and finds it not under his pillow but even further down his bed than last night’s lady’s cheap bracelet.

    Peter Hunt’s editing, perhaps, which cuts effectively and without puzzlement from scene to scene, evoking tension, drama and excitement in equal measure.

    Gordon Jackson, Sue Lloyd, Stanley Meadows, Freda Bamford, Thomas Baptiste and the rest of the solid support cast, perhaps, who provide Harry Palmer with just enough to trouble him or to relax him, depending on how much cooking, boxing, loving, shooting or investigating he’s done.  

    The sheer sixties coolness of the thing, perhaps, a window onto an indefinable cultural moment, a slice of cinema that reminds us times may have been rough, but societal change was afoot in the mid-sixties, class war was rife, prudishness was diminishing, the Cold War was functioning, technology was rising, everyday life was altering for good or bad for everyone, yet in the midst of it all, people smoked, drank, loved, laughed and died for causes unseen or unspoken and sometimes, just sometimes, a movie magically conjures those moments and wraps them in a pretty brown paper parcel so that we can only wonder, just wonder, was it really all as marvellously swinging, yet scrupulously decrepit as this?

    A fantastic spy film on every level.

    Bloody loved it, as Harry Palmer – or Michael Caine – might say.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    'Excellent Palmer, but I see you've left no room in your report for your follow-up, Funeral in Berlin...'

    'I didn't think it was relevant, sir.'

    'Nothing to do with it not being as good, I suppose?'

    It's contentious to say that The Ipcress File is better than any Bond given the name of this website but you can see how it might be so. I'll add a few things to @chrisno1 's excellent review; given that it is meant to be down-at-heel it dates better than many Bonds - OHMSS a possible exception - because of course what is down-at-heel stays down-at-heel decades later; much of that shabby decor would have looked the same in the 70s and even 80s given that's what it is, whereas luxury and opulence evolves and so will look dated further down the line, a bit passe.

    Secondly, producer Saltzman is right off the bat with this, Palmer's debut film. He's already got the Bonds under his belt so with this he brings an experience, know-how and John Barry all lacking to some extent with Dr No which, enjoyable as it is, feels like a movie sometimes finding its way, establishing itself. The production values are better, there's no sense of falling down because of course the whole thing is set in London - well, a lot of it - so there's no sense as with the early Bonds that things might be running a bit short at times; later Bonds had the budget but were always lagging slightly behind even then, a sense of reach exceeding grasp. In Ipcress it's like every shot is considered and of course there's the sense of the audience being a spy, observing through wine glasses of the windows of telephone boxes and so on. The closest Bond gets to that stuff is OHMSS. It also helps enliven the mundane plot which is simply Palmer tailing various people about town - the mirrored stalking in the library (was that a real venue or a Ken Adam set?) mentioned in the previous review reminded me of Grant stalking Bond along the train before their introduction.

    As with Dr No, rank is pulled on the hero by the boss insisting he change his gun.

    Latterly, perhaps these weird camera angles bog things down for just a couple of scenes because at that point the pace has picked up and we just want it served cold.

    A lot is made to establish Palmer's hetero credentials 'I like birds best!' because - and it's a sign of the era - his being a single man with specs, a liking for making his own cuisine, classical music and his own cafetière might mark him out as travelling on the other Routemaster, a Serious Charge back then when homosexuality was illegal. Indeed, Caine claims he chose to wear glasses (his character doesn't have them in the book) lest his starring role turn out to be a flop, so he wouldn't have been linked with the role thereafter (Plummer was in line to play Palmer, an odd choice we see now because his manner was so similar to Guy Doleman, who probably wouldn't have been cast in any case).

    We also see Palmer engage in an unnecessary fist fight with Grantby's bodyguard near the Albert Hall, given he could just chase after his quarry instead, it appears to be it's so we can see he's a real man really and handy with his fists, not just some faddish effete type.

    I love all the byplay and banter between Palmer and his work colleagues, we get to see Guy Edwards I think his name is as the duty sergeant, he popped up as the pub landlord in Minder and of course in Caine's Get Carter.

    Barr'y's score really is very good, I'd be minded to get the soundtrack. The Grantby track is utilised on that Beats By Dub Demand CD from the late 90s or thereabouts, under that very name, see also Timber off that album.

    There are snags later on. It makes dramatic sense to have Palmer undergo the same torture as the kidnapped scientists but with the bodies piling up by that point I'm not sure why they have to do it - can't they just bump him off? Shoot him? Or is the aim to get him to 'confess' to various stuff and bump off one of the section heads? (I won't spell it out to avoid spoilers) As with some Bonds, there's a continuity error with day to night - it seems like Palmer is meeting Dalby in a park in the early hours so how come Dalby's on his way to dinner? Ditto when Palmer happens upon a London bus - or is the night time meant to denote time has passed before he makes that phone call? Would the two men really head out alone to a deserted warehouse? Would an American spy really have a conspicuous bit of Elastoplast on the bridge of his specs?

    The book is quite different to the film, the key plot point adopted by a later episode of The Avengers starring Christopher Lee, if I recall. I think the recent series did it more accurately but I think that was a bit too stylised. This version is very much the era of A Hard Day's Night, the sense that posh boys are running the country, okay no change there then. The actor who plays Grantby was chosen for his resemblance to then Prime Minister Harold Wilson, I understand, much as Hitchcock's villain for The 39 Steps was meant to resemble FDR, just to make it more unsettling for audiences.

    Perhaps I was a bit unfair on Funeral in Berlin, I caught the first 15 minutes and it has a good few jokes in that time though Sue Lloyd is no longer Caine's love interest and his flat seems to have changed, though the furniture is the same. It took Bond six films for him to visit M's house, but Palmer visits his boss's house in just the second movie. Caine is lean and seems older and more commanding in this movie, a nattier dresser, his boss looks older too. Not sure it fits the character, quite. One of the old Ipcress team shows up briefly but I miss the byplay between his old work colleagues, kudos I suppose for not just making Ipcress 2 but honestly I just don't find the characters he has to interact with here terribly interesting or quite plausible; the Jewish woman who picks him up in Berlin - well, there must be a better way to describe her - but I don't find her too characterful, she is a cypher, an Israeli spy so that's her then. No John Barry of course, and Toronto-born Sidney F Furie, well he isn't back. Amazingly he turned out to have a real career of sorts, he did Sinatra's The Running Man, another one called The Lawyer which seems to be never seen on telly, then latterly he did rubbish like Iron Eagle, Iron Eagle IV (our own John Glen did Iron Eagle 3, (it seems to be the dustbin for famed movie directors) as well as Superman IV: The Quest for Peace which killed off Reeve's time in the role, talk about sublime to ridiculous. That said, he did continue directing, he is still alive, amazing to me given he was born the same year as my mum, who died five years ago, he's the same age as Caine in fact, and had something out in 2018 with Superman star Margot Kidder the year of her death - and has an upcoming film acc to imdb, though whether that's just sat in the can I don't know. Anyway, Guy Hamilton directs Funeral in Berlin, it's all a bit smooth and nowhere near as sinister as its predecessor, not quite authentic. It didn't help that BBC4 wasn't showing a lovely remastered print, either.

    The problem with the Palmer films is, once you establish you've got a downbeat, reluctant spy, the series doesn't have legs. You can only make things more downbeat, which gets a bit depressing. It has little logic for our man to be still in the game because unlike Bond he isn't motivated by patriotism, he is doing it under duress which is a bit of a drag. As with the Craig Bonds, once you establish as a downer, things get more depressing as they go on. Funeral isn't that depressing, nor is Billion Dollar Brain but instead the films exceed their brief a bit in trying to be exotic. I think those two both end with Palmer walking off in a strop at some betrayal by someone he thought he trusted or something.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    @Napoleon Plural It was on cable television here in the Philippines, but I have seen it many times before, but not for a long time, so I was happy to see it in the listings.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    I’d love to read your reviews of the Tarzan movies 😁

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    You’re welcome @Number24 you spend far too long watching “worthy” movies - it’s not good for you 🤣

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    THE DARK HALF (1993)

    Written and directed by horror supremo George A. Romero this adapts Stephen King’s psychological novel quite nicely. Timothy Hutton plays an author of respected literary novels whilst publishing thrillers under a pseudonym. He wants to stop writing the thrillers but his alter-ego has become a physical being and terrorises his family and friends. When murders start to be committed he becomes a suspect.

    Huttton gives a good performance and although it never really explains everything it’s worth a look.

    6/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    'Excellent Palmer, but I see you've left no room in your report for your follow-up, Funeral in Berlin...'

    'I didn't think it was relevant, sir.'

    'Nothing to do with it not being as good, I suppose?'

    "Not quite, sir. About that loan..."

    "What are you going to do with it, Palmer, buy a car?"

    "Hire another director, I thought, sir."

    @Napoleon Plural I recorded it. I can only take so much downbeat Michael Caine in one go.


    FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1966)

    While The Ipcress File was wowing them at Cannes, providing Michael Caine with a career launch pad playing a downbeat British special agent of dubious skills, Martin Ritt was going even more downbeat with John Le Carre’s even more anti-OO7 The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Filmed in noirish monochrome and dominated by a brutal performance from Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an agent who never quite seems to understand whose side he’s supposed to be on, Le Carre’s vision of spy work was far more morose than Len Deighton’s. I mention this because in part Funeral in Berlin covers similar territory to Ritt’s film, beginning and concluding with escapes across the Berlin Frontier.

    The Wall was still fairly new in 1965/66 so it probably had a certain fascination for filmgoers [JFK and “Ich bin ein Berliner” and all that]. Director Guy Hamilton, fresh from Goldfinger, utilises his Berlin locations to demonstrate a genuine sense of a city indulging in Weimar tastes, extravagance and decadence while teetering on the verge of chaos. The hotels are swish, the nightclubs bawdy and the women slinky and sexually available. Despite this, the look of the movie is not as innovative as its forebear. Hamilton only uses those slanted angles when Palmer meets his superior, Colonel Ross, which is a bit like Batman meeting his villains. It is a remarkably ordinary looking film. Guy Doleman is good once again as Ross, tending his garden of weeds, which he likens to marauding refugees – much like the desperate people jumping the wall.

    As with Ipcress, Deighton’s original novel is slimmed down for narrative coherence and here the finished story revolves around the defection of a senior Soviet colonel and a band of interfering Zionist agents seeking war criminals. Palmer has his eyes on every prize and second guesses his way to a suitable conclusion. He’s aided by virtually nobody. This is spy V spy V spy V spy. The film opens like West Side Story, a snatched series of scenes showing the day-to-day street life of Berlin, before the camera settles on the barren tract of land near the wall, where all is quiet and life has ceased to exist. A daring Modesty Blaise style escape, or a James Bond enterprise for OHMSS, involving a construction bucket, welcomes the martial music of the titles. Konrad Elfers orchestral score is below par. It is at its best when we don’t hear it. Ken Adam is still on hand, but the editing has been shovelled to John Bloom, and the cast isn’t as interesting.

    Palmer is dispatched to Berlin on a Saturday morning. He doesn’t like being disturbed at the weekend and tells his messenger boy such. “You really work on that insubordinate stuff, don’t you,” says his pyjama top clad squeeze, who is making him very bad coffee – nothing like his efforts in Ipcress. Palmer’s not impressed by his orders or by her, well, he likes the view of her legs: “You’re useless in the kitchen; why don’t you get back in bed.” About as anti-Bond as you can get: a frank way of checking his watch after telling his boss he’s going to be late. The woman later turns out to be one of Ross’ secretaries; now James Bond never went there either.

    In Berlin, we learn a little more about Palmer’s past, a stores swindle which landed him in a military prison, but kept his partner in crime Johnny Vulkan at leisure. Like Palmer, Vulkan is indebted to Colonel Ross, although his underwear business also nets him a tidy profit. Vulkan is a slippery customer from the get-go. As is slinky sexy lingerie model Samantha Steel – Eva Renzi, very nice, but dubbed by Nikki Van Der Zyl, so I kept thinking she sounded like Honey Rider / Ursula Andress. Oskar Homolka delivers a riotous turn as the double-crossing old Bolshevik Colonel Stok. Hugh Burden has the key role of the inside man, already under suspicion because he’s a homosexual, and losing his loyalties faster than the bodies can pile up.

    The film is solid rather than spectacular. It doesn’t do anything wrong, but it lacks the sparkle which made Ipcress such a starkly, sleek and impressive outing. Berlin tries to be seedy, tries to be dangerous, but you never have the impression Palmer is in any peril. Michael Caine carries the film well, already displaying his star quality, but only Doleman and Homolka are giving him any support. The screenplay is flat and its humour entirely misplaced – an early reference to Batman clouds it in a pop culture reference that both dates the film and makes a faintly obvious point: that spies don’t have a ton of secret special gadgets. The writer is trying to tell us we are not watching James Bond, but simply by doing so he acknowledges a debt to the genre and makes his own task more difficult.

    There is plenty to enjoy, despite the low key action, but it is mostly in the early sections as Palmer negotiates his way around Vulkan, Stok, Samantha, the Berlin police, Ross, Kreutsmann and the transexuals at a cabaret. The secondary plot about Nazi hunters and the war criminal Paul Louis Bloum serves to add intrigue but fails to generate any extra tension. The film ends in an underwhelming confrontation close to the Wall. Nobody seems to have won this particularly grubby game, which feels remarkably similar to Martin Ritt and John Le Carre’s viewpoint in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

    There’s a lot of love for this on IMDB. Reviewers hark on about how realistic and earthy it is, how they identify with the Cold War setting. Personally, I find the lack of panache dates the film irrevocably. Unlike Ipcress, which has a stylised and identifiable look, one that allows it to boldly escape the confines of its decade, Funeral in Berlin could only have been made in the sixties and it remains there, a dour and rather unimaginative time capsule. 

  • TonyDPTonyDP Inside the MonolithPosts: 4,279MI6 Agent


    VR is still very niche but it has evolved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. The newest headsets have visual fidelity that starts to approach what you get on good hi-def TVs and Sony's newest one even has HDR. 360 and 180 degree videos are fun and some filmmakers are starting to dip their toes into the genre; VR games can be even more amazing if they're well done since you are inside the game instead of watching it on a TV.

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