The cold war provided a lot of film about desperation to go west from the east, and of course, there are characters who would want to return to the old days, the very old days two decades before of when this takes place. Peter van Eyck is an Austrian wine market who somehow ends up on an agent when he agrees to get a book for old pal Christopher Lee, detained by American intelligence agent MacDonald Carey and agreeing to become a double agent, finding out that the book contains secret code. This leads him into be coming part of a convoluted espionage plot involving Lee's sister (Marianne Koch), and encountering a bunch of very dangerous people and both threatened and promised rewards by the same parties. It's an intriguing mix of political drama with a bit of romance (The beautiful Billie Whitelaw, years before being a scary nanny of the devil), and showing what happens when people unsuccessfully try to escape from east to west.
Van Eyck gets to play a very complex character who seems to be in a no win situation, told "Once a spy, always a spy", and desperately wanting out. "We are going to kill you. You can sweat it out until we do", he is told with Whitelaw overhearing, so the film gets more intriguing as it goes on. The black and white photography really seems to work for films about the cold war, and continues to increase in its grittiness and violence as it deals with these very sinister characters and their threats. Once agaon, Lee gets high billing for a very small part, and Carey, the future patriarch of "Days of Our Luves" has little to do as well. This is definitely a product of the early 60's, going beyond the newspaper headlinws into the secret world of espionage that could often seem rather confusing to the average guy. Not bad, but trying to be far too smart for its own good.
Van Eyck gets to play a very complex character who seems to be in a no win situation, told "Once a spy, always a spy", and desperately wanting out. "We are going to kill you. You can sweat it out until we do", he is told with Whitelaw overhearing, so the film gets more intriguing as it goes on. The black and white photography really seems to work for films about the cold war, and continues to increase in its grittiness and violence as it deals with these very sinister characters and their threats. Once agaon, Lee gets high billing for a very small part, and Carey, the future patriarch of "Days of Our Luves" has little to do as well. This is definitely a product of the early 60's, going beyond the newspaper headlinws into the secret world of espionage that could often seem rather confusing to the average guy. Not bad, but trying to be far too smart for its own good.