The James Bond film afficionados who have cut this film down are numbly insensitive to its genius.
A post-WW2 Nazi cult in Berlin has murdered 2 British agents. (Why? Were these unreconstructed Nazis any real threat?) An American working for British intelligence in the Mideast - think White Helmets more recently - is pulled out of there to try to find the Nazis for the new German government to arrest and prosecute ... and British intelligence to get revenge and anti-Nazi reassurance.
Quiller, played by George Segal, meets his affected if not effeminate handler Pol (Alec Guinness) in the Nazis' Nuremberg stadium and agrees to take the case, after hearing one of his friends is one of the victims.
He is criticized for being too independent and is warned to accept backup/support.
He is immediately tailed, but by a friendly whom he confronts in a friendly manner and then loses/evades.
Apparently given a list of suspects, he goes to the bowling alley of one, lying about wanting to establish a bowling franchise but otherwise sufficiently raising the suspicion of the Nazi owner.
Then he goes to a German late elementary (or middle) school to question the colleagues of an former Nazi war criminal who had been a teacher there and then was outed and committed suicide.
The tall, blonde statuesque headmistress is played by German actress Edith Schneider, and she leads him - lying that he is a magazine reporter/writer - to another, younger teacher who apparently was a personal friend of the deceased Nazi, Inge Lindt (Senta Berger), literally (and eye-poppingly) decked/popping out in a cling(y) light blue presumably cashmere sweater.
I'll observe that this is infinitely more erotic than seeing Senta nude would have been. It leaves her obvious beauties - Quiller conspicuously looks down at them which seems to titillate Inge - to our limitless imaginations. GREAT fashion era! }:-) She feigns unawareness, but accepts his offer to drive her home. Once there, they say good-bye but then a few moments later he tells her to wait - a yo-yo move to catch her then regretting telling him good-bye.
In her apartment they talk, and he gently interrogates her, and she finally warns him that these people - if they exist? - are dangerous. She is clearly lonely and he easily has her feeling attracted to him.
Here I'll interject is an important factor which is either being overlooked or deliberately omitted: George Segal's Quiller is VERY Jewish in his gently insistent, seductive demeanor ... remembering that this is not long at all after WW2 and that he is trying to help apprehend very anti-Semitic Nazis who would viscerally detest him!
Now known to them, he is covertly injected by a passerby to drug and then capture him and wakes up in the Nazi lair to be confronted by tall, blonde, severely Aryan ringleader Oktober (diabolically played by Swede Max von Sydow). They try to get him to identify his handler which he avoids only by giving them a recent name in his head: Inge Lindt!
Somehow resisting otherwise, Oktober - irritated about him having the affection of a beautiful German girl - orders him killed.
He then regains consciousness inexplicably on a concrete pier on the river front and then escapes his captors still in the area.
He meets Pol again, and then returns to Inge to interrogate and consummate their relationship then to again try to find the bad guys with the help of the headmistress and Inge.
The headmistress leaves him at the site, but Inge wants to continue to accompany him ... for his safety?
He ventures into the old bomb-damaged building, is captured, and then taken down to the dungeon where Inge has already been confined in a chair.
He is told that if he doesn't reveal his own headquarters she will be killed and is allowed to go outside to think it over, under close guard. Even the hotel he has stayed at is now in on this, but he escapes anyway and reports the hideout to Pol back at his own headquarters.
The German police are told the location, the bad guys are still there for some reason, and they are all rounded up ... but no girl. Was she murdered after all, after he escaped?
So the final scene is fascinating. He goes to the school that next morning to her classroom and she is there! ... still alive and obviously very surprised but not alarmed to see him again ... alive. He is both relieved and disturbed/suspicious she is safe.
He says something suggesting she leave Berlin and join him, but she says she has her work to do. (WHAT work? Why not *teaching*?) As he then departs - she is safe, and he is obviously not going to have her prosecuted, being in love with her - he is icily passed by the headmistress.
Inge is extremely submissive, lonely, and sexual. Is the headmistress lesbian? Had Inge been intimate with the Nazi who had committed suicide? ... or Quiller's murdered friend? ... or Oktober?
Intriguing film, albeit flawed by gaps in plot and narrative.
***** Further thoughts:
It's not just Senta's sweater: she gave a truly great performance. Watch her face at least as much as what she says - the wave of superseding, sensitive expressions of a lonely, conflicted, beautiful girl.
I can't think of any other actress who could do that so well!
And upon reflecting, I think this would have been a far better and possibly more realistic ending:
Previous to it, in bed he asks if she and the headmistress have been close friends, and she looks away and shyly says "Sometimes." (During the film his midnight phone call to her and asking if she is alone is classic. :-) )
In the film as it is, at the end he comes to her classroom and happily finds her alive, she makes some excuse about having been released by the Nazis, and then declines his further interest saying she has work to do, there.
But he was in the commanding position, not telling the authorities how she had been there apparently letting herself be used to try to get him to reveal *his* side's base - so this was all just a game of Banner Catch? :-) - but still able to do so.
So instead when she makes her excuse about finally telephoning he ignores that and says he'll carry her bag home for her again, and firmly if not threateningly "Agreed?"
She concedes but says they have to take precautions because of the time of the/her month. He instead says "No. Beautiful baby. Agreed?"
Shock, then resignation/concession, then excited arousal crosses her face, and she nods her head with a resigned smile.
As they leave the school on the sidewalk - him carrying her bag on one shoulder while them holding hands on the other side, here comes the stern headmistress, and with a wolfish smile - and Inge then looking down amazed and smiling at his nerve - he says, "Headmistress. Good to see you too."
And the headmistress walks on past a few steps and then stops in scared horror: She is under his control and on his menu too!
This was a very if not that explicitly sexual film, and my proposed ending would be far more appropriate.
A post-WW2 Nazi cult in Berlin has murdered 2 British agents. (Why? Were these unreconstructed Nazis any real threat?) An American working for British intelligence in the Mideast - think White Helmets more recently - is pulled out of there to try to find the Nazis for the new German government to arrest and prosecute ... and British intelligence to get revenge and anti-Nazi reassurance.
Quiller, played by George Segal, meets his affected if not effeminate handler Pol (Alec Guinness) in the Nazis' Nuremberg stadium and agrees to take the case, after hearing one of his friends is one of the victims.
He is criticized for being too independent and is warned to accept backup/support.
He is immediately tailed, but by a friendly whom he confronts in a friendly manner and then loses/evades.
Apparently given a list of suspects, he goes to the bowling alley of one, lying about wanting to establish a bowling franchise but otherwise sufficiently raising the suspicion of the Nazi owner.
Then he goes to a German late elementary (or middle) school to question the colleagues of an former Nazi war criminal who had been a teacher there and then was outed and committed suicide.
The tall, blonde statuesque headmistress is played by German actress Edith Schneider, and she leads him - lying that he is a magazine reporter/writer - to another, younger teacher who apparently was a personal friend of the deceased Nazi, Inge Lindt (Senta Berger), literally (and eye-poppingly) decked/popping out in a cling(y) light blue presumably cashmere sweater.
I'll observe that this is infinitely more erotic than seeing Senta nude would have been. It leaves her obvious beauties - Quiller conspicuously looks down at them which seems to titillate Inge - to our limitless imaginations. GREAT fashion era! }:-) She feigns unawareness, but accepts his offer to drive her home. Once there, they say good-bye but then a few moments later he tells her to wait - a yo-yo move to catch her then regretting telling him good-bye.
In her apartment they talk, and he gently interrogates her, and she finally warns him that these people - if they exist? - are dangerous. She is clearly lonely and he easily has her feeling attracted to him.
Here I'll interject is an important factor which is either being overlooked or deliberately omitted: George Segal's Quiller is VERY Jewish in his gently insistent, seductive demeanor ... remembering that this is not long at all after WW2 and that he is trying to help apprehend very anti-Semitic Nazis who would viscerally detest him!
Now known to them, he is covertly injected by a passerby to drug and then capture him and wakes up in the Nazi lair to be confronted by tall, blonde, severely Aryan ringleader Oktober (diabolically played by Swede Max von Sydow). They try to get him to identify his handler which he avoids only by giving them a recent name in his head: Inge Lindt!
Somehow resisting otherwise, Oktober - irritated about him having the affection of a beautiful German girl - orders him killed.
He then regains consciousness inexplicably on a concrete pier on the river front and then escapes his captors still in the area.
He meets Pol again, and then returns to Inge to interrogate and consummate their relationship then to again try to find the bad guys with the help of the headmistress and Inge.
The headmistress leaves him at the site, but Inge wants to continue to accompany him ... for his safety?
He ventures into the old bomb-damaged building, is captured, and then taken down to the dungeon where Inge has already been confined in a chair.
He is told that if he doesn't reveal his own headquarters she will be killed and is allowed to go outside to think it over, under close guard. Even the hotel he has stayed at is now in on this, but he escapes anyway and reports the hideout to Pol back at his own headquarters.
The German police are told the location, the bad guys are still there for some reason, and they are all rounded up ... but no girl. Was she murdered after all, after he escaped?
So the final scene is fascinating. He goes to the school that next morning to her classroom and she is there! ... still alive and obviously very surprised but not alarmed to see him again ... alive. He is both relieved and disturbed/suspicious she is safe.
He says something suggesting she leave Berlin and join him, but she says she has her work to do. (WHAT work? Why not *teaching*?) As he then departs - she is safe, and he is obviously not going to have her prosecuted, being in love with her - he is icily passed by the headmistress.
Inge is extremely submissive, lonely, and sexual. Is the headmistress lesbian? Had Inge been intimate with the Nazi who had committed suicide? ... or Quiller's murdered friend? ... or Oktober?
Intriguing film, albeit flawed by gaps in plot and narrative.
***** Further thoughts:
It's not just Senta's sweater: she gave a truly great performance. Watch her face at least as much as what she says - the wave of superseding, sensitive expressions of a lonely, conflicted, beautiful girl.
I can't think of any other actress who could do that so well!
And upon reflecting, I think this would have been a far better and possibly more realistic ending:
Previous to it, in bed he asks if she and the headmistress have been close friends, and she looks away and shyly says "Sometimes." (During the film his midnight phone call to her and asking if she is alone is classic. :-) )
In the film as it is, at the end he comes to her classroom and happily finds her alive, she makes some excuse about having been released by the Nazis, and then declines his further interest saying she has work to do, there.
But he was in the commanding position, not telling the authorities how she had been there apparently letting herself be used to try to get him to reveal *his* side's base - so this was all just a game of Banner Catch? :-) - but still able to do so.
So instead when she makes her excuse about finally telephoning he ignores that and says he'll carry her bag home for her again, and firmly if not threateningly "Agreed?"
She concedes but says they have to take precautions because of the time of the/her month. He instead says "No. Beautiful baby. Agreed?"
Shock, then resignation/concession, then excited arousal crosses her face, and she nods her head with a resigned smile.
As they leave the school on the sidewalk - him carrying her bag on one shoulder while them holding hands on the other side, here comes the stern headmistress, and with a wolfish smile - and Inge then looking down amazed and smiling at his nerve - he says, "Headmistress. Good to see you too."
And the headmistress walks on past a few steps and then stops in scared horror: She is under his control and on his menu too!
This was a very if not that explicitly sexual film, and my proposed ending would be far more appropriate.