Year:
1966
Rating: 7.0Quiller was a character created by Elleston
Trevor going under the name Adam Hall. He wrote 19 Quiller novels, but the
only film adaptation is this one. I have read a handful of them and they
are quite good. Narrated first person by Quiller. He works for a British
spy agency, played by an American here. What is interesting about the Quiller
character is that he is a thinking man's spy. He refuses to carry a gun because
he thinks that makes you lazy. The books often focus meticulously on the
art of spycraft. How to follow people, how to survey them, how to shake a
car following you. In an era of super spies, gadgets and action, he was the
opposite. Very realistic.
They carry that over to this film. Very
little happens in the film and yet it creates a fair amount of tension. No
action set pieces, no use of technology, no Q. Just a spy on his own trying
to stay alive and find the headquarters of a Nazi cell in post war Berlin.
The film gently mocks his superiors as dilettantes; George Sanders in London
fussing about food and Pol (Alec Guinness) showing no empathy towards Quiller
in Berlin. The script comes from Harold Pinter, the fine score by John Barry
and directed by Michael Anderson (Operation Crossbow, Logan's Run).
It begins with a lone man walking down a
street at night, bathed in shadows. He is clearly agitated as he looks around
him and finally goes into a phone box. He is shot dead. He was a British
agent. The man before him was also killed. They are trying to uncover a Nazi
cell headed by Max von Sydow. Quiller is brought back from holiday. He can
take the job or not. The dead man was a friend. He takes it. He has no idea
how to find them so he lets them find him. He puts himself out as bait. They
bite. He too has to walk down that same dark street. Quiller is played by
perhaps a too handsome, too passive George Segal. Senta Berger plays the
woman he falls for. It just broke even at the box office and no franchise
was attempted.
