The Quiller Memorandum

In these days of communicable diseases and precautionary measures for the greater good, folks on both sides of the aisle and of every color-stripe are being a little flippant with the "N"-word—"Nazi." 

So, just for a refresher course, we are going to sub-set the "Spies" series we're doing with movies where there are Nazi's (you know, "the bad guys"—Indiana Jones fought them in Raiders of the Lost Ark!) 

And we're going to call it "Nazi's...Nazi's everywhere."

Oh. And "Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day...

The Quiller Memorandum (Michael Anderson, 1966) This low-key spy film came out in the Christmas glut of 1966, competing with two other spy films released at the same time: Funeral in Berlin, the second Harry Palmer film to star Michael Caine and Murderer's Row, the second of the "Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin. 

Blame Bond.

The success of the James Bond series in the 1960's overwhelmed the movie marketplace with secret agents in plain sight, a rolodex of acronymically named organizations, disposable starlets, and a fawning desire to seem "hip" while toeing the party-line during the Cold War. It was a very odd time. 

The Quiller Memorandum slotted somewhere in between the two films, both in temperament and quality. Funeral was a typical spy film that took itself very seriously, while the Dean Martin picture was a parody of the Bond series (which itself is a bit of a parody) that took nothing seriously. And Quiller, which had an estimable cast and boasted a screenplay by Harold Pinter, should have been the best of the lot, but has a lackluster quality despite key ingredients. 

The film begins with the late-night murder of a man in a phone booth in Berlin, the consequences of which inspire a breakfast meeting between two British functionaries (played by George Sanders and Robert Flemyng), who supercilliously discuss the next person to take over the assignment that got the man killed—making him the second—with as much import given to the quality of the meal as to the matter of men's lives. Pinter's dialogue is circuitous, ambiguous and names are not used, merely initials.

Quiller (George Segal) is "on holiday" after an assignment in the Middle East and has been tapped for the assignment, the third man, and he is briefed on his task ("this is not an order...more of a request...") by Pol (Alec Guinness) in Berlin's Olympiastadiom ("...certain well-known personalities used to stand right up there" Pol deadpans). Quiller knew the other agents, knows that they refused cover on their assignments and that he will be watched for his protection. "The request" is to get a handle on the base of a strong Nazi element in Berlin, a new guard, "Youth...Nazi from top to toe_in the classic tradition...difficult to pinpoint. No one wears a brown shirt anymore, you see. No banners. Consequently, they're difficult to recognize—they look like everybody else."

Quiller begins by losing a company-man tailing him, then doubling back and finding what he wants. It's his contact who gives him research papers from the previous attempts. It's not promising: a receipt from a bowling alley and a swimming center, and an article about a teacher who has committed suicide after being accused of war crimes. He checks each location, glibly giving different covers, and blithely acting the fool, but finds nothing of interest other than the dead teacher's replacement, Inge Lindt (Senta Berger), but his interest is not particularly professional.

Quiller knows he's being watched, but his plan to let "the other side" know he's in town seems to be working only too well—the number of people matching his moves is starting to increase, but it is only when he is drugged*, kidnapped and interrogated by head-man Oktober (Max von Sydow) that his suspicions solidify. Perhaps his playfully losing his body-man speeding on the highway wasn't such a good strategy.

"You must be lonely sitting here among strangers." "No...I like meeting people.."

When the drugs wear off, Oktober begins the interrogation: "My name is Oktober. What's yours?" Quiller deflects, lies, makes up fanciful stories ("They call me 'Spike'"), moving around Oktober's direct questions and attempts to appeal to the hopelessness of his situation—he already knows who Quiller is and what his past assignments are, so Quiller's cheeky replies that he's a rare book purchaser at Doubleday's named O'Reilly-Kennety ("a double barreled name I found kind of weighty"), but this gets Oktober nowhere, so he zeroes in on his specific wants.

"You got a telephone around here? I should call my lawyer in New York, a guy called Kaspensky...
I'll make it collect so don't worry about that."

Oktober seeks "the exact location of your local Control in Berlin. We would like to know a little more about your current code-systems. We would like to be able to appreciate the extent of your knowledge about us. And also, what information, if any, your predecessor managed to pass to your Control. We would like to know the exact nature of your present mission in Berlin. You're a sensible man. You know perfectly well, you must give us this information since you have no alternative." Quiller considers this, looks a bit sheepish for a few beats then asks for a telephone to call his lawyer.

Sydow goose-steps a very fine line between menace and amusement during the sequence, cracking his knuckles and speaking in a cooing, clipped German accent, cajoling, seducing, grasping at straws of information that Segal babbles under further drug injections. But, Segal, try as he might, doesn't quite sell his struggles during the interrogation, except for a weak desperation. Perhaps it's because he's previously been so cocky and glib—but not in the manner of his minders with their noblesse oblique—he's a bit of a smart-ass, and if Segal was looking to inject some comedy in a straight-ahead thriller (that everyone else is treating satirically), it's at the cost of caring what he goes through and his competence at his job.

Oktober finally tires of his efforts and gives orders for another injection and when Quiller is out cold to kill him. But, Quiller wakes up on a half-submerged pier, shoe-less and groggy, but competent enough to hijack a taxi and escape pursuers. But, the point is: he's alive when he should be dead. The Nazi's want to use him as his Division does—to lead them to the opposition. At his next meeting with Pol—far less in the open that their previous one—Guinness' spy-master spells it out, using muffins: 

"Let me put it this way. There are two opposing armies drawn up on the field but there's a heavy fog-
they can't see each other. Oh, they want to, of course, very much. You are in the gap between them.
You can just see us, you can just see them. Your mission is to get near enough to see them, to signal their
 position to us so giving us the advantage. But if, in signaling their position to us, you inadvertently signal
 our position to them it is they who will gain a very considerable advantage.
That's where you are, Quiller. In the gap."

It's the most obtuse of missions without an end-game. Find out where they are, but don't tell them where we are. And Quiller, not sure of either side—having been set up as bait—and being used by friend and foe alike for the exact same purpose, becomes what he babbled under narcotics—"I am my own master." He'll do the job—give them the address of the Nazi base—but will do it his way, not telling them how, lest he be betrayed.

The film is so subtle for most of its length that when the film attempts to do something big, it comes off as ham-fisted, a bit like Segal's choice of mannerisms, played for comedy and without a lot of nuance. One wonders why he makes the choices he did, but one also wonders what would have happened to the overall tone of the film if the first choice, Charlton Heston had managed to secure the deal. One does not think it would be for the better.

Anderson's direction is better with location than people. Every so often, one gets a good composition with a cluster of actors in it, but most of the time, the shots are perfunctory and sometimes a bit clumsy, as with the shot of Senta Berger below. So much wasted space there, when he could have shown the gulf existing between Quiller and Ilsa—both kept alive as useful tools of the new Nazi's—by careful use of the widescreen format (even if subsequent versions have been cropped).

What does benefit the film is the odd score by Bond-composer John Barry, who abandons the Kentonesque jazz he'd employed in other thrillers and built his themes around a childish-tune played on a cymbalon, with an off-key whistling melody buried underneath that gets under one's skin, leaving an unsettling feeling of menace. It's not a soundtrack that would "chart," necessarily, (and has always made for an agitated listen) but it certainly works better at conveying the ambiguous ending.

It's a last-minute "save" that communicates a wistful dread at what the future will hold, the battle being won but the war being lost.

* The weaknesses of Pinter's script and Anderson's direction is on display right there. Quiller is knocked in the leg by a suitcase as he's leaving his hotel, turns around and demands "What's your name?" of the clumsy man, then walks to his car and flies on the Autobahn for several minutes to lose his handler. At a stop-light, the picture tilts and goes out of focus and one may wonder why Quiller is acting a bit stupid that he gets snatched. When he's strapped down by his inquisitors, he puts two and two together, and turns and looks at the man who bumped him (separate close-up of the man). "He did it!" he says almost happily. "Oh, hi, hello!" One is in danger of missing the whole thing if one has fallen asleep waiting for something to happen...which is a danger.