Final in Berlin

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Movie
German title Final in Berlin
Original title Funeral in Berlin
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1966
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Guy Hamilton
script Evan Jones
production Charles D. Kasher
Harry Saltzman
music Konrad Elfers
camera Otto Heller
cut John Bloom
occupation

Finale in Berlin (original title: Funeral in Berlin ) is the second film in a trilogy with the British agent Harry Palmer as the main character. It is based on the spy novel of the same name by Len Deighton and forms the sequel to the film Ipcress - Top Secret . It was continued in 1967 in Ken Russell's The Billion Dollar Brain.

action

The divided Berlin in the 1960s: Sergeant Harry Palmer, a former black market trader and now agent in the service of the British Security Service , according to the personnel file "arrogant, presumptuous and extremely opaque", is tasked with organizing the escape of a Russian secret service colonel who is willing to convert from East Berlin .

In Berlin, daring escape maneuvers over the wall succeed again and again, which is why the Russian Colonel Stok is also planning to flee to the West to enjoy his retirement there. The British secret service is supposed to organize this escape, which is why Palmer is ordered to Berlin. There he meets his old friend Johnny Vulkan, who also works for the British secret service.

Palmer - organized by Vulkan - crosses the border to East Berlin and meets with Stok. This demands that the escape be planned and carried out by the West Berlin escape aid specialist Kreutzman. Back in West Berlin, Palmer organizes that Vulkan should arrange a meeting with Kreutzman. Then he "happened" to meet the enchantingly beautiful Samantha Steel, who takes him home.

The next evening is the meeting with Kreutzman. This demands a large sum of money and prepared false papers, which is why Palmer has to go back to London. Stok is said to be smuggled out of East Berlin disguised as a corpse in a coffin.

In London, Palmer received papers made out in the name of Paul Louis Broum and a pistol. Through his contacts with the Berlin police, with the help of a burglar, he finds out that Steel has various false passports and that there must be a reason for her interest in him. The transfer operation for Stok is approved when Harry visits London; he receives the money and the papers Kreutzman asked for.

When they next meet, Harry Palmer and Samantha Steel reveal their secret service activities to each other. Steel works for the Israeli secret service Mossad and is looking for a former Nazi war criminal named Paul Louis Broum, who allegedly lives in Berlin under a false name and who has hoarded a million dollar fortune stolen by Jews in Switzerland. She suspects him to be around Vulkan, whereupon Harry learns that Vulkan himself is the former National Socialist Broum, who was mated from England for years.

The transfer of the coffin with the supposedly enclosed Stok from East Berlin goes smoothly, but when opening it turns out that it is not Stok, but the dead Kreutzman. Stok didn't want to flee at all, he just wanted to eliminate Kreutzman as a professional escape helper. Palmer is ordered to eliminate Vulkan (Broum), but leaves him alive. Broum wants to flee over the wall to East Berlin and via Czechoslovakia to Switzerland in a nightly action, but is shot by Steel and the Mossad agents. Palmer, who is also present at the action, gets away with his life.

actor

Originally, the role of Samantha Steel was to be cast with Anjanette Comer , who was then replaced by Eva Renzi due to illness . Eva Renzi's voice in the film has been replaced by a dubbing voice. The "enemies" Paul Hubschmid (Johnny Vulkan) and Eva Renzi (Samantha Steel) became a couple and married in 1967.

Locations

The film shows several well-known locations in West Berlin in the mid-1960s. The Berlin Wall, which is only a few years old, can be seen in its first stage of construction made of hollow blocks with barbed wire attached, including at the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie . Another location was the Görlitzer Bahnhof (in the film Marx-Engels-Platz 59) before it was finally demolished in 1975. Some scenes take place around Breitscheidplatz , on Kurfürstendamm and in Tauentzienstrasse . The film was also shot on the roof of the Europa Center and at Tempelhof Airport .

Reviews

  • Film service : "Carefully staged, somewhat lurid and sometimes confusing spy film."
  • Heyne -Filmlexikon (1996): “An interesting insight into how the intelligence services work, if that's how they work. Good cast in an exciting thriller. "
  • The Protestant film observer doesn't think much of the film: "Colored spy thriller, overloaded with subplots, not very logical in structure and only apparently realistic."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Final in Berlin. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ Evangelical Press Association Munich, Review No. 112/1967.