Legendary playwright Harold Pinter seems an unlikely author of a screenplay for a spy thriller, and yet he wrote that of 1966’s The Quiller Memorandum. Though this doesn’t have many of the qualities of Pinter’s best-known works, this is a work that stands out in that decade of endless Bond rip-offs.
That’s largely because this is such a low-key and humorless affair, though that doesn’t mean it is lifeless. The film this is the most like is The Ipcress File, except George Segal isn’t given the kind of cool quips that other script gave Michael Caine.
Segal is the title character, and by that I mean he is Mr. Quiller and not somebody named Memorandum. But wouldn’t it be a fascinating picture if he was?
For some reason, he is an American on a mission for the Brits to investigate the underground neo-Nazi movement in West Berlin. I guess the British spy service ran out of agents. They sure seem to lose enough of them, with their previous two on the case getting killed.
This is the kind of film where people meet in the stands of empty stadiums to have clandestine meetings, and this is how Segal receives the dossier for the mission from Alec Guiness. I have always wondered when watching a scene like this why being the only two people in such a space wouldn’t draw more attention to them.
The plot movies in zigs and zags as Segal seems to stumble into one situation after another. The trail he follows goes to some locations not normally seen in such thrillers, such as a bowling alley (in Germany?) and a competition swimming pool. At one point, he steals a cab, evades pursuers, and checks into a random seedy hotel. There’s a reason he is also shoeless through all this, but knowing that reason doesn’t make this any less strange.
Inexplicably, it seems what he’s best at is shaking Peter Carsten from his trail, and that guy is assigned to protect the American. What he’s worst at is deciding which people to trust, and he is way too trusting. That seems to me to not be a desirable trait for a secret agent.
It is instincts like this which lead to him to being drugged and captured by a villainous Max von Sydow. Some of the best exchanges in the film are in this scene. Sydow: “You must be lonely, being here alone with my statues.” Segal: “Oh, no…I like meeting new people.”
The obligatory love interest is Senta Berger, playing a school teacher. In yet another demonstration of Segal’s questionable decision-making, he falls for her fast and hard. Still, this proves to surprisingly be of benefit to him during the interrogation from von Sydow, giving her name in lieu of the moniker of anybody he’s asked about.
This is a movie that plays it very cool, almost glacially so. There are many long takes. Many scenes are sans music, when a less tactful film would employ a score to tell us exactly how to feel.
The Quiller Memorandum is a so-so spy thriller, but still recommended for fans of the genre. I don’t think it is as smart as it thinks it is, but it still has elements which position it as a more adult and sophisticated film than many of its ilk, what with the sparse use of music, the long takes and scenes with untranslated German. Alas, it also isn’t as fun as it could be, but it is still a hell of lot more than…oh, let’s say Hitchcock’s terrible Torn Curtain.
Dir: Michael Anderson
Starring George Segal, Alec Guinness, Max von Sydow, Senta Berger
Watched on Network UK blu-ray (region B)