Showing posts with label Harry Palmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harry Palmer. Show all posts

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Funeral in Berlin (1966)



Ex-con turned British spy Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is sent to Berlin on a mission. He must find Soviet intelligence officer in charge of the Berlin Wall, Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka) and make him defect from his position. Palmer is tasked to concoct an elaborate escape out of Berlin for Stok with the help of his contact Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid) and hires criminal mastermind Otto Kreutzmann (Gunter Meisner) to help him. In the meantime Palmer becomes enamored with the beautiful Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), an Israeli spy sent to hunt down a former Nazi. This target holds the secret documents that reveal where jewels stolen during WWII are hidden. Things get really complicated for Palmer when he's double-crossed, important figures in the mission keep dying and the true identity of the Nazi is revealed.

Directed by Guy Hamilton, Funeral in Berlin (1966) is the second of the Harry Palmer spy films starring Michael Caine. He also appeared in The Ipcress File (1965) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and the character was revisited with two more films in the 1990s. Funeral in Berlin was shot on location at a time when crossing the Berlin Wall was met with a lot of red tape or was highly dangerous to do illegally. Funeral in Berlin is the least interesting of the three Harry Palmer films I've seen. Mostly due to a lack of character development and the numerous double-crossings make the plot difficult to follow. However, one could watch all three Harry Palmer films back to back and enjoy them immensely. Caine is so friggin' cool as Harry Palmer with his neatly pressed suits, combed back hair and thick rimmed eyeglasses.

Funeral in Berlin is a Cold War spy thriller that is not as captivating as the other Harry Palmer films starring Michael Caine but still delivers enough intrigue to be worth a viewing. I read that Akim Tamiroff was supposed to play Colonel Stok and I can't help but think it would have been a better movie with him in it!




Funeral in Berlin (1966) is available on DVD from Paramount. You can purchase a copy at my MovieZyng store.

 Thank you to Allied Vaughn for sending me a copy of Funeral in Berlin (1966) for review.

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