The people in charge of the secret service - Robert Flemyng, George Sanders and Alec Guinness - are a callous lot who don't care a bit about their endangered or murdered operatives.
It's a beautifully cold espionage tale, written by Harold Pinter, based on a novel by Elleston Trevor. I love that in the strategy meeting between Segal and Guinness, using cakes to show the two sides, Guinness actually eats the pawn in the middle - he eats Segal.
George Segal, Senta Berger, Max von Sydow, Peter Carsten, Robert Helpmann, Edith Schneider, Günter Meisner (The Odessa File, The Boys From Brazil, Funeral in Berlin, mainly in Germany).
Frederick Wilson's editing was BAFTA nominated as was the screen play and art direction (Maurice Carter) - but bizarrely not John Barry's music. Chilly Berlin exteriors help a lot. Erwin Hillier photographed it. ITV Studios' Blu-Ray release is an improvement of the DVD but still rather washed out:
The rather nice Mercedes convertible is a 1958 220 S.
I reviewed it on 19 January 1977: "This is a very good spy film, one of many correctives to the James Bond cult. The haunting score from John Barry is incredible." 7/10. And on 25 May 1995 "There are some lovely dry bits of script, and Segal is sympathetic in unusual role."
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