Top Secret (film)

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Movie
German title Top secret
Original title The Salzburg Connection
Panorámica de Salzburgo.  04-09-06.JPG
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1972
length 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Lee H. Katzin
script Oscar Millard
production Ingo Preminger
music Lionel Newman
camera Wolfgang Treu
cut John Woodcock
occupation

Top Secret is an American thriller by Lee H. Katzin with Barry Newman and Anna Karina in the leading roles, made in Austria ( Salzburg , see photo on the right, and the surrounding area) in 1971 . The theater actor Klaus Maria Brandauer made his film debut here. The story is based on the novel The Salzburg Connection (1968) by Helen MacInnes , which in turn was based on the ineradicable rumor since 1945 that the German National Socialists sank a valuable treasure in the Austrian Toplitzsee in the Alps shortly before the end of the war in 1945 .

The real star of "The Salzburg Connection": Salzburg's old town and the Hohensalzburg fortress
View over the second location, Toplitzsee , which is called “Fintersee” in the film

action

Austria 1971. The American photographer Richard Bryant dives into a deep mountain lake, the “Fintersee”. He is watched by a certain Anton without Bryant noticing. Bryant brings a heavy crate up from the lake bed from his dive. This is the beginning of dramatic events that drag some men and women into a dangerous vortex. The US lawyer William "Bill" Mathison, currently on vacation in Austria, visits Bryant's photo shop in Salzburg in search of a photo book about Austrian mountain lakes. He is acting on behalf of the publisher James Newhart. Bryant's Austrian wife Anna hands Bill correspondence from a certain Eric Yates, who claims he is Newhart's representative. Attached is a countersigned check for the illustrated book. After Bill leaves, Anna's brother Johann Kronsteiner receives a call from Felix Zauner, a family friend, who tells him that Bryant has been the victim of a terrible accident.

Not far from the photo shop, Mathison notices that he is obviously being followed by two men. To take this off, he takes a cab and lets himself be driven through town. Soon another man with a mustache was attached to him instead of the two guys. To be absolutely sure that he is being followed, Bill Mathison takes part in a tour of the Hohensalzburg Fortress . While trying to take off his mustache, Bill meets the young American Elissa Lang. They start a conversation and Mathison finally invites Elissa for a drink in his Salzburg hotel. In the meantime, Johann drove to the lake where Bryant's body was discovered. He should identify his brother-in-law. The American, who allegedly died in the accident, had slight abrasions on his hands, which must have been caused by a violently rubbing rope. As you could see at the beginning of the film, Bryant had pulled the box up on a rope with the greatest possible effort.

Bill Mathison, who is meeting with Elissa, has no idea that she works for Mr. Zauner from the Austrian secret service. In the hotel where the blonde meets with the lawyer, she calls her boss and reaches his deputy, Bernard Dietrich. It is one of the two men who had followed Bill a few hours earlier. Dietrich informs Elissa of Bryant's death. She then contacts the young KGB agent Lev Benedescu. Obviously the attractive lady works as a double agent. Benedescu receives information from Elissa that Bryant has passed away by force. At the behest of CIA man Chuck, publisher Newhart calls Bill and communicates Chuck's request to meet him. While Johann travels to the far end of the Fintersee, Bill receives a visit from Anna, who tells him about the death of her husband. Anna is absolutely convinced that her husband was murdered. So she asks Bill if Yates is involved in this matter. The US attorney explains to the young widow that Yates has also mysteriously died in the meantime.

Anna discovers that her murdered husband and Yates, who were also killed, once worked for British intelligence. But she, Anna, never trusted Yates. She confides in Bill her belief that her husband may have given himself up to espionage again. When Bill later brings Anna home, Elissa breaks into Bryant's now closed photo shop and steals his photos taken at Fintersee as well as his correspondence with Yates. Bill and Anna arrive at the store and discover that someone has just got in there. Elissa escapes unrecognized, but is followed by Bill. In a side path, Elissa is caught by a stranger, whom she overpowers and kills. Bill is late. He and Anna find the dead and Anna recognizes Bernard Dietrich in the dead. At Fintersee, where Johann is still following the trail of the missing box from the lake, Anna's brother is being followed by the two German neo-Nazis Anton and Grell. Johann discovers the mysterious chest at the edge of the forest and can fight off the two brown guys. Then Johan disappears with the box to his girlfriend Trudi Seidl's mountain hut.

Bill brought Anna, who was deeply disturbed by recent events, to his hotel and rented a room for her there because she would probably no longer be safe in business at home. Her brother Johann visits her at the hotel the following morning. He tells her that he found his dead brother-in-law's chest and secured it. Johann also reports that a Mossad agent approached him and offered to buy Bryant's chest from him. Obviously, its content must be more than explosive. Anna reminds her brother that Bryant and Dietrich obviously had to die because of this chest and that it would be better to destroy the lake find. On the same day, Bill meets with CIA man Chuck on a mountain top. On the way there, Mathison discovers another body, which Chuck will later say that one of his people had to kill him. The dead would have been a Polish spy who worked for the Chinese. Chuck explains to Bill that the CIA was working with Yates, a double agent. His real name was Emil Birch.

Gradually it is becoming clear that this ominous box contains highly explosive documents from old Nazis who are still active today and who have infiltrated the West or are being instrumentalized by Western secret services. Bill shows Chuck astonishment why the CIA desperately wants the documents. Chuck explains to his compatriot that several Germans named in these lists are active in important scientific positions for the USA and that the exposure of their Nazi past would be an absolute catastrophe for the reputation of the United States. Chuck asks Bill to put pressure on Anna about the box, which is already being processed by Zauner and the Austrian secret service. In the afternoon of the same day, Johann returns to the Trudis mountain hut, where the two German neo-Nazis who were last left behind are already waiting for him. Anton and Grell overpower and kidnap him. Mathison is reluctant to approach Anna, who has since learned about the contents of the box from an old Nazi. In the photo shop Anna receives a phone call from Johann's friend Trudi, who excitedly tells about Johann's disappearance.

Bill drives Anna to her husband's funeral and waits at the cemetery entrance. Two men grab Anna and drag her into a car that quickly leaves the location. Bill notices the action and follows the car towards town. He can push his car in front of the kidnapper vehicle so that the traffic comes to a standstill for a short time and the police are alerted. Meanwhile, Anton and Grell begin to torture Johann. They want to know where he hid the chest. Elissa meets with the Soviet agent Benedescu, who is annoyed that the American double agent who works for him has so far not been able to put Bill in the cold. Benedescu hands Elissa a bomb with a time fuse. As soon as the documents are in the hands of the Russians, they will use them to destroy the chest for good. Anna and Bill, who heard of Johann's disappearance, want to meet Trudi that evening, but first see Zauner's vehicle on the street. They discover the Austrian secret service agent in a shop and want to inform him that Anna's brother is said to have disappeared without a trace. Shortly before, however, Zauner's agent Elissa suddenly appears on the scene. Bill instinctively senses danger and brings Anna out of the shop. Zauner obviously knows that Elissa is responsible for the death of his colleague Dietrich and makes it clear to her that the Austrian secret service is aware of her double agent work and her contacts to Yates and thus also to the Russians. Elissa assures Zauner that she wants to destroy the chest, which seems to suit him. In an adjoining café, she meets a group of neo-Nazis and makes it clear to them that she absolutely wants to get her hands on Johann to find out where the box is kept. The Nazi thugs then spoke briefly on the phone with Johann's kidnappers Anton and Grell. On the phone, Elissa pretends to be Anna and tries to convince the already battered Johann to pull out the chest, otherwise Trudi's life is in serious danger.

At the same time, Chuck appears at Anna and Bill's and all three go to Trudi. Trudi hands the three of them the coveted chest. You want to leave their home when Elissa and the neo-Nazis on the one hand and head of the secret service Felix Zauner on the other. Zauner and Mathison interrogate the brown henchmen, while Elissa attaches her bomb to the box unnoticed. The explosion comes earlier than expected and rips Elissa apart. Chuck takes the brown gangsters into custody and Zauner explains to Bill that he knows where to keep Johann hidden. On the way there, Bill admits that he and Chuck have since exchanged the box. Zauner, in turn, makes it clear why he was so personally interested in getting the Fintersee Fund into his hands: his name is also on one of the document lists! He once served as a Nazi informant to save his wife from deportation to a concentration camp during the Second World War . Arriving at Johann's hiding place, Zauner tries to negotiate a deal with Anton and Grell so that he can take Johann with him without bloodshed. Bill tries to strike on his own when a shot is fired and Zauner is fatally hit. The American takes the battered Johann with him at gunpoint. A few days later he and Anna leave Salzburg.

Production notes

Top Secret was created from the beginning of September to mid-November 1971 in Salzburg and on Lake Toplitz and was premiered on August 30, 1972 in New York. The German premiere took place on November 10, 1972.

The Filmbauten come from Herta Hareiter , the costumes gave Lambert Hofer . Pia Arnold was the production manager. Rolf Schmidt-Gentner was responsible for the sound mix and Otto Boris Dworak for the casting.

For the composition veteran Bronislau Kaper , who has been active in German and then American film for four decades , this would have been the last film music, but his composition was discarded and one by Lionel Newman was used instead.

synchronization

role actor Voice actor
Bill Mathison Barry Newman Rolf Schult
Anna Bryant Anna Karina Renate Küster
Johann Kronsteiner Klaus Maria Brandauer he himself
Elissa Lang Karen Jensen Ilse Pagé
Felix Zauner Wolfgang Preiss he himself
Chuck Joe Maross Martin Hirthe
Newhart Whit Bissell Friedrich Schoenfelder

Reviews

The reviews at home and abroad were consistently devastating; Hardly any reviewer left a good hair on "The Salzburg Connection" . Only the beautiful Austrian locations were positively mentioned.

Roger Greenspun wrote in The New York Times August 31, 1972: “With twice too many characters and three times too much content, Oscar Millard's script for 'The Salzburg Connection' would have beaten even the best directors. It's not even a competition against Lee H. Katzin ('Le Mans', 'Heaven With a Gun'). "

Arthur D. Murphy called the film "unevenly limp" in the August 2, 1972 issue of Variety .

Gene Siskel ruled in the Chicago Tribune on August 29, 1972: The film was "a lethargic and completely confused espionage story" and scoffed: For more than "90 minutes it says: 'Box, box, what's in the box?' Of course, that won't be revealed until the last few minutes, but then the point is reached where there could be nothing left in the box that would save the film. "

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times panned the strip on September 27, 1972 with the following words: “The worst movie I have seen of the entire year. Not 'one of the' worst ... "

Gary Arnold of The Washington Post stated in the August 14, 1972 issue that "The Salzburg Connection" is "one of the least exhilarating spy thrillers I've ever set my eyes on."

The lexicon of the international film reads: “Western and Eastern secret services hunted down Nazi documents (addresses of collaborators) that SS men sank in Lake Toplitz in 1945. A tension-free agent film against the backdrop of Salzburg, which offers a confusing and confusing rendezvous of all evil agents from East and West. "

Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide located a “terrible film version of Helen MacInne's bestselling novel ... Irritating use of slow motion and frozen picture gimmicks”.

Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as follows: "Bulbous, experienced action thriller with attractive locations."

Individual evidence

  1. This is a fantasy name based on the Toplitzsee
  2. Top Secret in the German dubbing index
  3. Top Secret. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 14, 2019 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ^ Leonard Maltin: Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 1128
  5. ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 879

Web links