The Quiller Memorandum | George Segal, Alec Guinness | Quintessential Paranoiac Spy Thriller

The Quiller Memorandum | George Segal, Alec Guinness | Seen an advance copy of the DVD and it's a real treat

DVDs:

The Quiller Memora...

	The Quiller Memorandum George Segal, Alec Guinness 20th Century Fox, 2006 average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Quintessential Paranoiac Spy Thriller

THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM ranks as one of the best cold war spy films to come out of the era of the 60s. It is truly an essential film from this genre and era. The unsettling and relentless paranoia permeates this entire film. You are not always certain of the meaning of the dialogue, actions and motivations of the characters as seen from Quiller's perspective. This film leaves you on the edge of your seat for its entirety. You trust no one as the film unfolds. Michael Anderson's direction is riveting. John Barry's score is exceptionally bleak and is an antithesis to his work on the James Bond films giving THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM a very realistic and authentic feel of the people who live in this subterfuge of uncertainty and shadows. George Segal's excellent performance is one of a good natured fellow who finds himself totally befuddled as he sinks deeper into this ambiguous world but his persistence drives him to see that his job gets done to the end. Segal was a great choice for this role because he posses a very quiet charisma and creates empathy through his physical mannerisms and great facial expressions. Segal makes viewer feel like you are the one in his shoes. This is a great film.

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Seen an advance copy of the DVD and it's a real treat

Based on the best selling 1965 novel by Adam Hall, this movie starring the likes of George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max Von Sydow and Senta Berger remains fairly faithful to the source novel except in the miscasting of Segal in the lead role. In the novel Quiller is British, but here Segal plays him as an American agent - and it doesn't work as well as it might. There is for example no explanation given as to why Quiller is working for the British and reporting to a British handler. Still, the movie is an intelligent and tautly constructed thriller as Segal scours through Berlin looking for the ringleaders of a shadowy neo-Nazi organization.
The lead special feature for "The Quiller Memorandum" is an audio commentary conducted by film historians Eddie Friedfeld and Lee Pfeiffer. The two are obviously good friends (both being professors at NYU) and the commentary is very academic in tone, but still engaging. They begin by framing the movie in the context of the Cold War. Other key points in the commentary include discussions on the symbolism in the movie and standards of the spy genre. They go on to discuss how "The Quiller Memorandum" fits in perfectly with a rash of espionage movies of the mid- to late-sixties. At that time a series of "anti-Bond" movies were being released from the Harry Palmer series through to "Quiller." They featured a reluctant, cynical hero with even more reluctant, cynical bosses. This allowed these movies to capitalize on the 007 phenomenon, but with a more realistic view of the world.
An interesting collectible booklet accompanies the DVD, which is actually quite in-depth. It includes discussion on the development of the story; the adaptation by acclaimed Harold Pinter, the tremendous cast, the help afforded the production during its German shoot and how the villains were changed from Neo-Nazis to communists when the feature was released in Germany.
Both "Quiller" and "The Chairman" (also being released by Fox on Nov. 7) contains trailers for several other movies, of varying quality. The trailers for "The Quiller Memorandum" for example include not just the one for the feature, but also for "Our Man Flint," "In Like Flint," "The Chairman," "Deadfall," "The Magus" and "Peeper." As might be expected however the trailers do show their age, and not always gracefully.

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A satisfyingly cynical spy thriller with George Segal, Alec Guinness and Max Von Sydow; and a script by Harold Pinter

If your idea of an exciting spy thriller involves boobs, blondes and exploding baguettes, then The Quiller Memorandum is probably not for you. With a screenplay by Harold Pinter and careful direction by Michael Anderson, the movie is more a violent-edged tale of probable, cynical betrayal by everyone we meet, with the main character, Quiller (George Segal), squeezed by those he works for, those he works against and even by the delectable German teacher, Inge Lendt (Senta Berger) he meets.

Quiller has arrived in Berlin for an assignment under the control of Pol (Alec Guinness). He is to infiltrate and locate the headquarters of a neo-Nazi organization headed by Oktober (Max Von Sydow). And, by the way, Pol tells Quiller, the two men who had the assignment before you were both killed. It's not long before Quiller realizes, as he's captured, drugged and questioned by Oktober, that Oktober's organization is just as interested in locating and wiping out Pol's group. Quiller managers to escape, but was it too easily done? Pol points out to Quiller that he's now a piece between two players who cannot see each other. Only Quiller can see them. If he gets too close to one player, the other player will follow him and know how to take action. Both Pol and Oktober, each in his own way, would be perfectly content to sacrifice one agent in order to catch the bigger game. Quiller is on his own. He's crafty, careful and resourceful. He doesn't carry a gun. The one thing he has going for him is that he knows he dare not take anything at face value. The resolution may see the bad guys finally taken...but not all of the bad guys. The Quiller Memorandum, while exciting in its own way, has a distinctly bittersweet air to it. The film doesn't leave you with world-weary angst, just the knowledge that if you want to trust anyone you'd better find another line of work.

I have no idea how many writers who wrote popular screenplays went on to become Nobel laureates, but at least one did. Harold Pinter, who won the Nobel for literature in 2005, brings some of the supposedly enigmatic Pinter style to the movie. There are stretches of dialogue that may make you wonder what on earth the point is, but then you realize the point is to let you think about what these people are up to and what they are really like. The scene in a sports stadium when Quiller first meets Pol is quite funny because it seems so irrelevant. Guinness and Segal play it straight, which makes it even better. But in between the mannered irrelevancies of Pol's observations about Nazi rallies, acoustics, how hungry he is and how good one of his sandwiches looks, we begin to think about how ruthless a man Pol probably is. Pinter uses the same approach with Max Von Sydow's gentlemanly questioning of a tied-up Segal. While John Barry's music score is, to me, often too Sixtyishly obvious, the quiet, thoughtful theme he uses under the credits gives fair warning that this is not going to be a rock 'em, sock 'em spy thriller. All the actors do fine jobs, including George Sanders and Robert Flemyng as two London spy mandarins at their club, who are as much concerned about the quality of the pheasant Flemyng is having for lunch as they are about the situation in Berlin.

I suspect that many people will be intrigued by the film, but that others will find it slow, too cynical or too complicated. Give the movie a chance; even cynicism at times can warm an empty heart. The DVD transfer looks just fine to me. There is a printed insert in the case which gives background on the film. The only extra is a commentary by Eddie Friedfeld and Len Pfeiffer, identified as film historians. I didn't take the time to listen to it.

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"Have you ever heard of a man called Jones?"

The Quiller Memorandum was originally intended by the Rank Organisation to launch a series to replace the Harry Palmer films after Harry Saltzman took them to Paramount and subsequently United Artists after both studios dropped out of Saltzman's Battle of Britain. It got off to a good start at the box-office but never caught on outside the big cities, although the BBC did resurrect the character for a short-lived series with Michael Jayston in the 70s. Ironically not only filming but also some locations overlapped with Funeral in Berlin, resulting in at least one bizarre photo-opportunity of the two jaded spies happily swapping notes.

The battleground is political ideologies again, but unlike other sixties spies and despite being set in West Berlin, Quiller isn't concerned with cold war politics or communist spy rings (you don't even see the Berlin Wall) but instead with the far right. Well, unless you saw it in Germany on its original release, that is, where Max Von Sydow's cabal of neo-Nazis became communists in the dubbing process. Its use of locations is exemplary, the Nazi focus on healthy minds and healthy bodies working its way into the choice of settings, from swimming pools to schools, and the influence and flow of history illustrated by the die-hard neo-Nazis hiding in the bombed out ruins of the old Germany while the next generation of fascists work out of gleaming modern buildings that are part of the rebuilt Germany. George Segal's Quiller is even briefed in the Olympic stadium Hitler had built for the 1936 Games by Alec Guinness's ever so slightly camp salami-munching cockney.

Perhaps alone among spy thrillers, this is the one where everyone knows the screenwriter's name but virtually no-one remembers the director's. Harold Pinter's often sadistically playful script is without doubt a cut above, preferring unspoken deceptions and more insidious mind games to action scenes. Indeed, the first interrogation scene between a drugged Segal and a quick-thinking Von Sydow is a particularly smart and convincing bit of wordplay as the one tries to steer the questions away from the subject with thoughts of sex only for the other to use them to lead the cross-examination back to the point, while the rematch at the end of the film sets the spy a far more effective moral conundrum. Certainly as Michael Anderson's reputation has diminished and Pinter's grown it's become one of the few films where all credit has gone to the screenwriter, but Anderson's direction is surprisingly strong, particularly if you see the film in its original Scope ratio. John Barry's score is quietly impressive too, eschewing the downbeat jazz of The Ipcress File and the boldness of his Bond scores for a haunting loneliness that helps set Quiller apart from his more popular predecessors.

Fox's region 1 DVD shows willing on the extras with an audio commentary, US trailer, booklet and trailers for Our Man Flint, In Like Flint, The Chairman, Deadfall, The Magus and "Peeper, but is outshone by the recent remastered UK PAL DVD from Network that offers 35-minutes of on-location interviews with Segal, Von Sydow, Guinness, Senta Berger, Anderson and producer Ivan Foxwell, stills gallery and the UK theatrical trailer (although the UK transfer of the feature does have a lack of detail, with some shots appearing out of focus and faces tending to be flattened).

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5

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