Film Snail

The Quiller Memorandum
The Quiller Memorandum

5.7

The Quiller Memorandum

NR·1966·104m

Summary

After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.

Crew

Director

Michael Anderson

Lyricist

Mack David

Novel

Trevor Dudley-Smith

Screenplay

Harold Pinter

Reviews

John Chard

John Chard

March 27, 2016

6

Oktober, and the trees are stripped bare.

The Quiller Memorandum is directed by Michael Anderson and adapted to screenplay by Harold Pinter from the novel "The Berlin Memorandum" written by Elleston Trevor. It stars George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max von Sydow and Senta Berger. Music is by John Barry and cinematography by Erwin Hillier.

There's no frills and graces about The Quiller Memorandum, it follows a straight spy drama narrative that pitches Segal (excellently cool) into Berlin to unearth the location of some Neo-Nazis. He gets involved with the sensual Berger whilst battling his wits with an insidious Sydow. Location photography is pleasing, as is the swirly score, but even though there's a nice ambiguity to the finale, there's a feeling of disappointment that actually not a great deal has happened in over an hour and half of film. Not dull exactly, and in fact there's enough interest to, well, hold the interest, but for every leanly written passage of play there also comes a yearning to have some espionage pizazz to thrill the senses. 6/10

Media

Status:

Released

Original Language:

English

Budget:

$0.00

Revenue:

$1,500,000.00

Keywords

spy