Not terribly audience-friendly, but smart and very, very cool. Soon after his amorous encounter with Inge, Quiller is drugged on the street by a crafty hypodermic-wielding operative and wakes up in a seedy basement full of stern-looking Nazis in business attire. Pol tells Quiller the fascist underground is far more organized and powerful in Germany than people believe. Michael Anderson directs a classy slice of '60s spy-dom. My take was, he knows she's one of the bad guys, and same with the headmistress who he passes on the way out. The protagonist, Quiller, is not a superhuman, like the James Bond types, nor does he have a satchel full of fancy electronic tricks up his sleeve. After all, his characters social unease and affectless personality are presumably components of the movies contra-Bond commitment. Quiller (played by George Segal) is an American secret agent assigned to work with British MI6 chief Pol (Alec Guinness) in West Berlin. A much better example of a spy novel-to-film adaptation would be Our Man in Havana, also starring Alec Guinness. His investigations (and baiting) lead him to a pretty schoolteacher (Berger) who he immediately takes a liking to and who may be of assistance to him in his quest. A handful of engaging spy thrillers followed before the author paused his novels to focus on journalism, although its also worth noting that he has freelanced. He calls Inge and arranges to meet. The screenwriter, Harold Pinter, no less, received an Edgar nomination. Can someone explain it to me? The film was shot on location in West Berlin and in Pinewood . While the rest of the cast (Alec Guinness, Max Von Sydow and George Sanders) are good and Harold Pinter tries hard to turn a very internal story into the visual medium, George Segal is totally miscast as Quiller. Keating. They are all members of Phoenix, led by the German aristocrat code-named Oktober. The source novel "The Berlin Memorandum" is billed in the credits as being by Adam Hall. My take was, he knows she's one of the bad guys, and same with the headmistress who he passes on the way out. They both go to the building, whereupon they are captured. After they have sex, she unexpectedly reveals that a friend was formerly involved with neo-Nazis and might know the location of Phoenix's HQ. If you've only seen the somewhat tepid 1966 film starring George Segal which is based on this classic post-WWII espionage novel, don't let it stop you from reading the original. Lindt (Berger) is a school teacher who meets Quiller to translate for him. Have read a half dozen or so other "Quiller" books, so when I saw that Hoopla had this first story, I figured I should give it a listen to see how Quiller got started. Max von Sydow as a senior post-War Nazi conspirator over-acts and is way out of control, Anderson being so hopeless and just a bystander who can have done no directing at all. The Quiller Memorandum, British-American spy film, released in 1966, that was especially noted for the deliberately paced but engrossing script by playwright Harold Pinter. Elleston Trevor (pictured) himself was a prolific, award-winning writer, producing novels under a range of pen names nine in total! Directed by Michael Anderson; produced by Ivan Stockwell; screenplay by Harold Pinter; cinematography by Erwin Hiller; edited by Frederick Wilson; art direction by Maurice Carter; music by John Barry; starring George Segal, Max Von Sydow, Alec Guinness, Senta Berger, and guest stars George Stevens and Robert Helpmann. Quiller, however, escapes, and with Inges help, he discovers the location of Phoenixs headquarters. Neo-Nazi plot Like Harry Palmer, Quiller is a stubborn individualist who has some rather inflated ideas of being his own man and is contemptuous of his controlling stuffed-shirt overlords. After being prevented from using a phone, Quiller makes a run for an elevated train, and thinking he has managed to shake off Oktober's men, exits the other side of the elevated station only to run into them again. Released at a time when the larger-than-life type of spy movie (the James Bond series) was in full swing and splashy, satirical ones (such as "Our Man Flynt" and "The Silencers") were about to take off, this is a quieter, more down-to-earth and realistic effort. I wanted to make a list of all the things that are wrong with this film, but I can't - such a list would need much more than a thousand words. Quiller's primary contact for this job is a mid level administrative agent named Pol. I recall being duly impressed by the menacing atmospherics, if much of it went over my head. Unfortunately, the film is weighed down, not only by a ponderous script, but also by a miscast lead; instead of a heavy weight actor in the mold of a William Holden, George Segal was cast as Quiller. Yes, Scream VI Marketing Is Behind the Creepy Ghostface Sightings Causing Scares Across the U.S. David Oyelowo, Taylor Sheridan's 'Bass Reeves' Series at Paramount+ Casts King Richard Star Demi Singleton (EXCLUSIVE), Star Trek: Discovery to End With Season 5, Paramount+ Pushes Premiere to 2024. Inga is unrecognizable and has been changed to the point of uselessness. Corrections? Elleston Trevor wrote 19 novels in the highly successful Quiller series. Watchable and intriguing as it occasionally is, enigmatic is perhaps the most apposite adjective you could use to describe the "action" within. They wereso popularthat in 1966 a film was made the title waschanged to The Quiller Memorandum and from then on all future copies of the book were published under this title, rather than the original. Variety wrote that "it relies on a straight narrative storyline, simple but holding, literate dialog and well-drawn characters". America's leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema. Scriptwriter Harold Pinter, already with two of the best adapted screenplays of the 1960s British New Wave under his belt (The Servant and The Pumpkin Eater), adapted his screenplay for Quiller from Adam Halls 1965 novel, The Berlin Memorandum. The friend proves to be Hassler, who is now much more friendly. Quiller enters the mansion and is confronted by Phoenix thugs. International in its scope its contributors include scholars from Australia, Quiller . Our hero delivers a running dialogue with his own unconscious mind, assessing the threats, his potential responses, his plans. Instead, the screenplay posits a more sinister threat: the nascent re-Nazification of German youths, facilitated by an underground coven of Nazi sympathizing grade-school teachers. George Segal as Agent Quiller with Inge Lindt (Senta Berger). What will Quiller do? The setting is as classic as the comeBerlin during the 1960s. It was time for kitchen-sink alternatives to the Bond films upper-crust Empire nostalgia, channeled as it was through a tuxedoed, priapic Anglo toff committing state-sponsored murder in service of Her Majestys postcolonial grudges. The Quiller Memorandum's strengths and charms are perhaps a bit too subtle for a spy thriller, but those who like their espionage movies served up with a sheen of intelligence rather than gloss or mockery will embrace Quiller.Still, there's no denying that that intelligence doesn't go as deep as it thinks it does, which can be frustrating. (UK title). The original, primary mission has been completely omitted. Quiller (played by George Segal) is an American secret agent assigned to work with British MI6 chief Pol ( Alec Guinness) in West Berlin. Segal plays Quiller with a laconic but likeable detachment, underlining the loneliness and lack of relaxation of the agent, who can- not even count on support from his own side. But admittedly its a tricky business second-guessing his dramatic instincts here. So, at this level. Quiller, a British agent who works without gun, cover or contacts, takes on a neo-Nazi underground organization and its war criminal leader. By day, the city is presented so beautifully, it's hard to imagine that such ugly things are going on amidst it. Very eerie film score, I believe John Barry did it but, I'm not sure. Pol tells Quiller that Kenneth Lindsay Jones, a fellow agent and friend of Quiller's, was killed two days earlier by a neo-Nazi cell operating out of Berlin. The movie made productive use of the West German locations. His job is to locate their headquarters. George Segal, plays the edgy American-abroad new CI5 recruit (looking unnervingly at times like a young George W Bush!) I too read the Quiller novels years ago and found them thrilling and a great middle ground between the super-spy Bond stories and the realism of Le Carre. It relies on a straight narrative storyline, simple but holding, literate dialog and well-drawn characters. I just dont really understand the ending to a degree. I read the whole Quiller series when I was younger, and loved it. Despite an Oscar nomination for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," Segal's strength lies in light comedy, and both his demeanor and physical build made him an unlikely pick for an action role, even if the film is short on action. These include another superior soundtrack by John Barry, if perhaps a little too much son-of "The Ipcress File", some fine real-life (West) Berlin exteriors, particularly of the Olympic Stadium with its evocation of 1936 and all that and Harold Pinter's typically rhythmic, if at times inscrutable screenplay. It's a bit strange to see such exquisitely Pinter-esque dialogue (the laconic, seemingly innocuous sentences; the profound silences; the syntax that isn't quite how real people actually talk) in a spy movie, but it really works. This repackaging includes some worthwhile special features like an isolated score track and commentary by film historians Eddy Friedfeld and Lee Pfeiffer of Cinema Retro magazine to go with the new format. But George Segal just doesn't cut it as a British secret agent in The Quiller Memorandum. But how could she put up with the love scenes with the atrocious Segal? What Adam Hall did extremely wellwas toget us readers inside the mind of an undercover operative. The setting is Cold War-divided Berlinwhere Quillertackles a threat from a group ofneo-Nazis whocall themselves Phoenix. Max Van Sydow is better as the neo-Nazi leader, veiled by the veneer of respectability as he cracks his knuckles and swings a golf club all the time he's injecting Segal with massive doses of truth serum, while Senta Berger is pleasant, but slight, as the pretty young teacher who apparently leads our man initially to the "other side", but whose escape at the end from capture and certain death at the hands of the "baddies" might lead one to suspect her true proclivities. Analismos este filme no 10. episdio de TRS J COMPANHIA. Always under-appreciated by U.S. audiences, it's a relief to know that she's had a major impact on the German film community in later years. Alec Guinness is excellent as a spy chief, and he gives a faint whiff of verisimilitude to this hopeless film. A crisply written story that captured my attention from beginning to end. I listened to the audio version narrated by Andrew B Wehrlen and found it an utterly engaging tale. Fans of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" will notice that film's Mr. Slugworth (Meisner) in a small role as the operator of a swim club (which features some memorably husky, "master race" swimmers emerging from the pool.) But then Quiller retraces his steps in a flashback. Their aim is to bring back the Third Reich. Adam Hall/Elleston Trevor certainly produces the unexpected. He steals a taxi, evades a pursuing vehicle and books himself into a squalid hotel. But the writing was sloppy and there was a wholly superfluous section on decoding a cipher, which wasn't even believable. I've not put together a suite before so hopefully it works.Barry's short (35mins) if atmospheric score for the Cold War thriller The Quiller Memorandum, 1966. As Quiller revolves around a plot that's more monstrously twisted than he imagines it to be . Languid, some might say ponderous mid-60's British-made cold-war drama (it could scarcely be called a thriller, more "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" than, say "Thunderball") that for all its longueurs, does have some redeeming features. In the 60's, in Berlin, two British agents that are investigating a Neonazi ring are murdered. In typically British mordant fashion, George Sanders and a fellow staffer in Britain are lunching in London on pheasant, more concerned with the quality of their repast than with the loss of their man in the field! The Quiller Memorandum, based on a novel by Adam Hall (pen name for Elleston Trevor) and with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, deals with the insidious upsurge of neo-Nazism in Germany. This is one of the worst thriller screenplays in cinema history. This one makes no exception. Its excellent entertainment. As classic as it gets. With its gritty, real-world depiction of contemporary international espionage, The Quiller Memorandum was one of the more notable anti-Bond films of the 1960s. The latter reveals a local teacher has been unmasked as a Nazi.