Alfie(Lewis Gilbert, 1966) This is the film that catapulted Michael Caine to the A-list of stars—a bit of a wonder, that, as he essays the titular lead in this character study of a complete rotter of a misogynist, a taxi-driver/chauffeur whose relationships with women are as transitory as any fare.
One shouldn't be too surprised by this, I guess, as audiences have always had a tendency to gravitate to, and even admire, villains, be they "Scarface" or Darth Vader or Brando's "Wild One" or "The Godfather." Maybe it's the nature of film to be a spectator sport and with the safety of being removed from any hurtful fall-out, we can choose to imprint on "bad guys" and their assertive natures to do harm. Maybe it's just wish-fulfillment on audience's parts—"I wish I could get away with that in my own life" and especially nowadays as there's no Hays Code strictures requiring just punishments be meted out by the end of the picture. There don't need to be ramifications anymore, and in this brave new world, the heroes and villains get all mixed up. Here, the term "anti-hero" need not apply.
"I suppose you think you're gonna see the bleedin' titles now.
Well, you're not, so you can all relax..."
Caine's Alfie Elkins is no anti-hero. He's a bloke trying to make do for himself and making no apologies for it ("You've got to live for yourself in this world, not for others."), certainly not to his conquests, and certainly not to the audience, whom he addresses directly from the get-go, in mid-assignation with a married woman (he may be misogynistic, but he doesn't discriminate). In his first-person discourse*he's as cheekily blunt as he is with his ladies in question (and their questions usually revolve around commitment, something Alfie is adamant he'll have no part of—"I don't want no bird's respect - I wouldn't know what to do with it.").
So, we watch as he tramples over hearts in his own memorial parade: There's that married woman, Siddie (Millicent Martin) cheating on her husband, while Alfie goes back to his cheated-upon girlfriend Gilda (Julia Foster) who lives with him for a time, quite unhappily as he refuses to even consider "settling down" with her ("I told Gilda from the start that I ain't the marrying sort." he says by way of explanation. "And do you
know what?" he continues cluelessly, "She don't mind. She's a stand-by and she knows it. And any
bird that knows its place in this world can be quite content."). That must include—in addition—the manageress of his dry-cleaners, a "foot-comfort" technician, a woman named "Dora", "the odd bird that came by chance" like Carla (Shirley Anne Field)—the nurse at his convalescent home when he's diagnosed with "spots" on his lungs, the girl he picks up on the motorway (Jane Asher),
the wife (Vivien Merchant) of a fellow patient (Alfie Bass) at the convalescence, and a woman,
Ruby (Shelley Winters), who he chats up while taking photographs as a side-hustle.
"My understanding of women only goes as far as the pleasure. When it
comes to the pain I'm like any other bloke - I don't want to know." And he doesn't want to know; if there are complications, inconveniences—like a couple pregnancies—he'll lay down the law of how it's going to be and any reluctance just spells (for him) merely the end of any consistency in his hook-up schedule. He's a hit-and-run heart-breaker, not sticking around to see the damages. Alfie...and Alfie...show the dark underbelly of "the Swingin' 60's" and what happens when the swinging stops—you're left twisting in the wind, basically; things don't look so "gear" when people are chewed up in them.
Caine plays this cad as charmingly as he can, speaking breezily without much change of expression and little irony betraying any self-awareness. For all the winking at the camera that could have been, Caine avoids it with a mostly passive expression that is betrayed by a speech-ending toothy grin or a darkness around the eyes when the situation—and they're usually those rare instances when he's not totally in control—calls for punctuation. That lack of countenance betrays an empty heart inside.
One of the themes I keep harping on throughout these posts through the years is that love is a form of insanity. It's not a disparagement, just an observation that love—and its inherent selflessness—is the one thing that can circumvent the tendency of our alligator-brains to favor self-preservation above all else. Alfie is a movie that leans into that argument to a horrific degree; his predisposition to his wants and needs (as if he needs anything or anyone) lines up with his absolute disdain for anything resembling a caring regard for other human beings. People are opportunities to be taken advantage of, not fostered. And, for awhile, that's suitable.
But, the armor around his heart does have some dents in it. When his girlfriend Gilda gets pregnant, she decides to keep the child—despite Alfie's initial reluctance—and, for a time, Alfie, uncharacteristically, accepts his role as father to little Malcolm, taking pride in his son and devoting time to him (notwithstanding that a baby in a baby carriage helps attract women). But, Gilda grows weary of his fair-weather fatherhood and leaves him to marry another man. Later, he has to actually confront the consequences of his actions, and, in trying to find another path, gets a comeuppance...of sorts...as he finds himself on the receiving end of his past behavior, leading to some soul-searching and to the film's final "What's it all about?" (Cue Burt Bacharach, sung by Cher...produced by Sonny**at least in the States-side release).
It's a tough, funny—in a black-hearted kind of way—film that breaks barriers of subject matter while also shaking its cane at the unraveling moral fabric of its society, both teasing and admonishing with the same strokes, and drives home the scrambled cliche that "Time Wounds All Heels."
* Of, course, it's in first-person—Alfie doesn't think of anybody but himself.
** I'm glib about it, but Burt Bacharach's end-credits song is (to my ears) the best of his song-book (reportedly, he thought so, too), providing an "on-the-nose" counter-point to everything that has gone before, with clear-eyed "let-me-spell-it-out-for-you" lyrics by Hal David. Something even non-believers can believe in.
How to Steal a Million(William Wyler, 1966) Writer Harry Kurnitz (who the story for Hatari!, the novel for A Shot in the Dark, and the screenwriter for Witness for the Prosecution and a couple entries of the "Thin Man" series) could be counted on to deliver a solid story that never really amounted to what it promised...that is, other than to entertain and entertain mightily. Especially if all the elements were in place—good photography, cracker-jack actors, an ornate location or two. He didn't write important pictures. He wrote fluff. Good fluff. That would satisfy audiences, and make critics suspicious that they were being conned.
The story goes that director William Wyler, after directing Audrey Hepburn to an Oscar for Roman Holiday, wanted to re-team her with co-star Gregory Peck for another rompish movie, this time set in Paris. In the forseeable future, however, Hepburn and Wyler worked on The Children's Hour together, Wyler had directed a little film called Ben-Hur, and Peck had won his Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird. Somehow, the elements wouldn't gel until Wyler put together Hepburn and Peter O'Toole—who was toiling in an endless stream of drama parts, and was probably attracted to the idea of something lighter for a change.
What the fuss is all about...
The story concerns one Charles Bonnet (Hugh Griffith), whose French estate contains some of the world's most renowned art treasures, and who, also, maybe coincidentally, is also one of the world's most unknown art forgers. His daughter Nicole (Hepburn, all Givenchy'd up and no place to go—O'Toole's character makes a crack about it later in the movie) is constantly worried that Dad is going to go too far some day and the Paris gendarmes will come knocking at their door and the family's wealth and reputation will be as worthless as one of Daddy's forgeries.
Wyler, exploiting the film's wide-screen presentation,
It doesn't help that while father Charles attends a celebratory soiree at the museum, Nicole** must confront a burglar, one Simon Dermott (O'Toole), caught in the act of examining one of the Bonnet Van Gogh's. In a tuxedo, he's exceptionally well-dressed for burgling, a move no doubt inspired by Charles' absence for the night. But, he's charming enough to be able to disarm the situation, although she does manage to ruin the line of sight by accidentally shooting him in the arm. "Oh, it's just a flesh wound" Nicole scolds. "But it's MY flesh!" he retorts.
Nicole should be worried. Dermott is something of a fraud himself. Plus, the Bonnet household is being circled by art dealer DeSolnay (Charles Boyer), who has decided to look into the Bonnet provenance and have it investigated. And a rather eccentrically driven American wheeler-dealer (Eli Wallach) wants to obtain the "Venus" by any means necessary—including marrying Nicole.
And then, there's the major complication: insurance. Charles Bonnet is not worried about the Venus being determined a forgery, as he is merely loaning it out and it need not be examined for authenticity. He thought. But, as the museum has to insure the statue from theft, it must go through the formality of a "technical examination, which will expose the fakery. Bonnet has already signed the papers, inadvertently giving the Museum permission to its study, so surely that will expose the family.
Nicole then decides—mad-cap that she is—to hire Demott (the only burglar she knows) to steal the statue before it can be found out. It takes about an hour of cute dialogue, spry encounters, several costume changes and that nearly lethal incident of "meet-cute" before we get there. The rest of the movie documents the long, drawn-out robbery which relies on false alarms—and we see all of them.
There is magnetism involved among the principal actors—Hepburn pirouettes in her own spotlight, and O'Toole observes, amused. Wyler, on the other hand, is content to make sure we see how expansive the sets are, like he was still filming Ben-Hur. Those sets, however, never seem more than nattily-dressed cavernous sound-stages (his next film would be the equally ornate Funny Girl). How to Steal a Million is a trifle, with all the consistency of just-applied meringue, and with as much confectioner's sugar.
One interesting thing to ponder is what might have been. For the role Wallach eventually played, Walter Mathau (who was in Hepburn's Charade and starred on Broadway in Kurnitz's "A Shot in the Dark" was approached but wanted too much money. Cast instead was George C. Scott, who, unfortunately, turned up late for his first day of shooting...like, after lunch. Wyler, who was already worried that O'Toole and Griffith, two notorious drinkers, were in danger of derailing the project, would not abide such behavior in a third, and promptly fired Scott, which, apparently, greatly upset Hepburn.
One can only imagine...
Face it. Whatever the plot, this is what audiences wanted to see.
* It's fictional, but then so is The Cellini Venus...
** Interestingly, she is again caught in her bed reading a book involving Alfred Hitchcock (as was also the case in Roman Holiday). I don't know if this was a nod to his fellow director by Wyler, or if Hepburn was attempting to court Hitch to appear in one of his films (although the film Charade is considered the next best thing), but the two never collaborated. Maybe because Hepburn would not have let Hitchcock decide what she wore.
Dr. Who and the Daleks(Gordon Flemyng, 1966) One must admit: I came to the party late. I came to the party as an adult. I came to the party as an American. I came to the party post-Douglas Adams. What I knew about "Who" before that was a professional aside—I did sound design earlier in life and a lot of the BBC's licensed Sound Effects Library (from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop) had a LOT of Dr. Who effects with all sorts of titles like "Tardis Interior" and "Take Off" and "Dalek Base"—there were also lots of "Dr. Who" sound effects record albums cluttering the bins (back in "the day" of vinyl and record stores). In my sound design duties, I didn't use them much. They were primitive electronics using lots of reverb and "loop rings" and feedback and, frankly, I could do that myself. They were best used as "camp" and "humor" effects. They were "hokey," I snootily thought.
What I didn't know is that they were also beloved.
Oh, I got into it once it got rebooted in 2005, there had already been eight Doctors (not counting the subject of these films) and such as Stephen Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Neil Gaiman and (good lord!) Richard Curtis started to write them. The old shows—which a local PBS station runs ad infinitum—I never warmed to. But, then, I hadn't yet cracked the realization that a Dr. Who plot had to be something that a child might come up with for an afternoon's game, but laced with an adult's cultural knowledge.
There were two films made for the theaters, with slightly higher budgets—on film, on location, widescreen and in colour—and their stories were culled from the television series' highlights, but the dogma of Who was mostly ignored.
This Dr. Who (played in both films by a fussy Peter Cushing) was merely an eccentric inventor—not a Time Lord—very much Earth-bound and human, but could travel time and space by his marvelous transport The Tardis—police phone-box on the outside, large control room on the inside. He is joined on the Tardis' voyage by granddaughters Susan (Roberta Tovey), Barbara (Jennie Linden) and Ian Chesterton (Roy Castle), Barbara's beau. They find themselves on the planet Skaros (although it isn't named in the film) which has suffered an atomic war. The two warring parties were the Thals, humanoid creatures (with much make-up) living in the jungle, and the Daleks, a species that encase themselves in maneuverable metal housings to protect themselves from resulting radiation who live in a large city-complex.
Dr. Who and his companions—or as they function in the Who-niverse "exposition-receivers"—find an antidote to the radiation, and, visiting the city under the pretext of fixing a Tardis component, come to realize that the Daleks are not some poor little travelling versions of spam-in-a-can, but bent on eliminating the Thals and taking the planet for their own.
Excuse me. Not eliminate. But, "EX-TERMM-I-NAAATE".
The Daleks aren't exactly capable villains; you have to take for granted that the fearful reactions of our heroes are warranted. Oh, they threaten a lot in their ring-modulated voices (in English), but their arms are topped by a very clumsy double claw or, unimpressively, a plunger emanating fire extinguisher fumes. But, there are a lot of them and their hive-mind singularity of purpose gives them a Nazi-like implacability. But, they were popular with the TV series' young viewers, who were awed by the inhuman qualities of the Daleks.
The film is crudely done, and there are incidental little elements that make one roll one's eyes, but would energize a 6-year-old by letting them know they were smarter than the people on-screen. It was popular enough in Britain, and did even cause a stir in America. But, it was enough to encourage a sequel, also with Cushing.
But, emerging from the Tardis, they find London in ruins, with roving bands of rebels fighting an unseen occupying force, and roving bands of Robomen, ordinary Londoners captured and enslaved by the conquerors to root out any resistors.
It doesn't take long before the answer is revealed—a Dalek is rising out of the river Thames! The Daleks have invaded Earth. With the inevitable separation of the heroes, things start to look increasingly bleak: Tom and the Doctor are taken prisoner aboard a Dalek ship and threatened with being turned into Robomen! Susan and Louise are captured by resisters and held in the London Underground, where they learn that there's an imminent attack on the Dalek ship. Susan stays behind with the wheelchair bound Dortmun and the tramp Wyler, while Louise joins the attack. The three decide that their best use will be to travel to a rumored Dalek mining camp located in Bedfordshire...Susan leaves a scrawled chalk message on the door for her grandfather telling her where she's going.
"Meanwhile"...back on the Dalek ship, Tom and the Doctor are nearly turned into Robomen, a process that dresses them in black latex jumpsuits and clamps a motorcycle helmet with ill-fitting goggles on their heads while lights flash and their natural tendencies to "just go with it" are enhanced turning them into non-critical thinkers, conspiracy-theory "specialists" and "patriots" ready to subvert any system designed to create a civilized democratic society for one ruled by self-obsessed autocrats. Any six year old will recognize this as a metaphor for the rise of Nazism in Germany, but once puberty scrambles the hormones, one forgets this and confuses it with their right to cherish freedoms that make them appear more powerful than people who remember history.
Anyway, the "Underground resistors" storm the Dalek ship and rescue the Doctor and Tom from any further indoctrination and threat of prosecution. The Doctor leaves with another of the rebels, while Tom and Louise are stuck on the ship when it takes off and heads for the Dalek slave camp in Bedfordshire. The Doctor returns to the London Underground and decides to follow the leaving ship for its destination and completely misses Susan's note to him telling him where she's going, thus making every child in the audience slap their foreheads in frustration and wonder if the Doctor is such a good role-model to emulate.
So, at this point, everybody is at the Daleks' concentration camp with the collective objective of freeing their fellow Londoners and defeating the evil-saltshakers. Their weakness, it turns out, is linked to their ultimate plan of dropping a bomb into the Earth's core and replacing it with a mechanism to turn the Earth into a giant space-ship. However, The Doctor looking at the mine-shafts plans reveals that if they can somehow deflect the bomb to a shaft that is equidistant of Earth's magnetic poles, the resulting explosion would pull the metallic Daleks into Earth's core, crushing them like grapes and destroying them utterly.
And so, that is just what they do, crushing the Daleks, saving the Earth, and convincing British youngsters not to go into the mining industry. Good triumphs, the Tardis returns Tom to the point ten minutes before they initially picked him up, so that, knowing what had happened in the past, he can successfully apprehend the criminals he let escape the first time and allowing him a chance to guest-star in the TV series when it gets rebooted in the much-more-near-future. I'm sure there were some audience members who wish they had a Tardis so they could get the two hours they just spent back.
"EX-TERRRMM-I-NAAATE!"
One has to say that, however puerile and juvenile the whole thing is, it certainly looks better than the previous film, probably because the film-makers had a better idea of what London looked like after a blitz than they did an alien planet, and that Dalek ship actually looks pretty nifty. And there is one character who is particularly fascinating, and that is Brockley (played by Philip Madoc), a black marketeer who doesn't give a hoot what the struggle is about, he'll just use it to his advantage. The character is such a snake and the actor plays him so matter-of-factly that he stands out from the rest of the cast just for taking the role so seriously. He gets a lovely "that'll show 'im" death, as well.
Who-afficianados in "Whoville" tend to look askance at these films as "not-according-to-canon" and best left undiscussed like other humiliating embarrassments, such as "The Star Wars Holiday Special" and Marjorie Taylor Greene. But, still, it's Peter Cushing in an iconic role, which, like his turn as Sherlock Holmes, may not be as true as it could be, but is still a game "go" at it.
"Okay, go back to your homes, everything's alright now, bye!"
Seconds(John Frankenheimer, 1966) Post "Star Wars," science fiction films have been pretty cookie-cutter—fleet-ships, a Hero with a Thousand Names, odd plasticized bi-ped creatures in supporting roles and quests that somehow or other usually get around to revenge. Even the "new" can become old hat. Science Fiction used to be about concepts, and technology was just an aspect of futurism. For all the newly-conceptualized metal and plastic and wires and blinking lights, it is the organic that has to contend with the changes and evolution just can't keep up with the advancement of tools (especially when they're eventually turned into weapons). Who or what is being served? How does one adjust...if one adjusts? That's why to see Seconds is still a thrilling experience, as it calls to mind a feature-length, subtler "Twilight Zone" episode,that takes an idea and turns it around in its hand, exploring the angles...and the consequences.*
Bank executive Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is receiving mysterious phone-calls from someone who claims to be an old friend but doesn't sound like him. A note is slipped into his hand as he enters the subway, and upon further exploration (and prompting) learns that he is being offered a second chance in life. The anonymous corporation will transform him with plastic surgery (even replacing his finger-prints) and an exercise regimen, while setting up a planned "accident" with an unrecognizable "similar body-type" to explain his absence. To the world, he will die, but he'll be resurrected as a new man, with a new life, in a new community—everything re-arranged neatly and clinically. From the ashes of Arthur Hamilton will emerge Hamilton 2.0, Antiochus Wilson (Rock Hudson), bohemian painter. "Wilson" makes a go of his second chance, but he's still the man he used to be inside, and he struggles internally with his new choices...and the ones he left behind. Changing his mind becomes the greatest challenge.
One should also be aware that in one scene in the corporation's stark "briefing room," the cast is comprised of Randolph, Will Geer (he's especially creepy in this role, while being his most benevolent) and Jeff Corey—all "brethren" in the secret society of blacklisted actors.
This version of Seconds is not the one released in the States in 1966. A disorienting wine-making festival sequence with pre-hippie free-thinkers orgiastically stomping grapes in the buff was deemed too risque for its release (and Hudson wasn't comfortable with the sequence, as is evident in his performance), but it has been restored for the DVD release. It's still an affecting film, even now, over 40 years later, a cautionary time-capsule of that era when the concerns of the speculative writer was society and not space-ships. Sometimes, fantasies have a nasty habit of becoming nightmares.
Saul Bass' disorienting Title Sequence gets you in the mood.
* Director Frankenheimer worked in the Golden Age of Live Television and worked with Rod Serling, pre-TZ, and post-TZ—Serling wrote the script for Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May.
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.
