THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM (1966: Dir. Michael Anderson)
The Sixties were a busy period for Michael Anderson. Although he didn't enjoy the success to rival Around The World In Eighty Days, he did work with a panoply of Hollywood legends including: Gary Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Richard Widmark, Yul Brynner, Tony Curtis, Sophia Loren, and George Peppard. Anderson's dream project was to film Harold Pinter's adaptation of the Robin Maugham novel The Servant. Unfortunately after much effort and Pinter's unwavering support, he was unable to secure financing so he sold the property to American expatriate director Joseph Losey, who made the acclaimed film in 1963 starring Dirk Bogarde. Pinter was always appreciative of Anderson's valiant efforts, so he offered to write for him another more commercial script, this time adapting the first of Elleston Trevor's Quiller novels The Berlin Memorandum. The resulting film re-titled The Quiller Memorandum, turned out to be a high point of Anderson's entire output, featuring Pinter's uniquely rhythmic dialogue, full of pauses and repetitions, underscoring the obfuscatory espionage practiced by every character on screen. As expected, Anderson assembled a talented pool of actors, including star George Segal in his second top-billed role as the eponymous Quiller, an intrepid agent assigned by British intelligence to ferret out neo-Nazis in West Berlin. Although the idea of altering Quiller's British nationality was a commercial one, it allowed Segal to bring an effortless New York Jewish warmth to his performance, thus humanizing his isolated foreigner as he interacts with a rogue's gallery of cool Germans and stiff Brits. Quiller's worthy adversary is Oktober, a knuckle-cracking Nazi played with witty relish by Max Von Sydow. Often employed in sinister roles, the lanky blonde Swede was ideally suited to the role of a cultured Aryan interrogator, with his commanding voice amplified and imposing height maximized, by the vaulted ceilings of his secret headquarters. As a menacing presence, he is in stark contrast to Quiller's stuffy British superiors, played by George Sanders, Robert Flemyng, and Alec Guinness, who in an obvious Pinter touch, are depicted as a ludicrous cabal of food-obsessed social snobs. An unusually smart and cynical suspenser, The Quiller Memorandum remains largely forgotten today in a culture dominated by successful brands like James Bond and John Le Carre. It's sole lasting legacy may be the title song Wednesday's Child, sung by Matt Munro, composed, along with the film's haunting score by John Barry, and employing the exotic sound of the cimbalom, a Hungarian hammered dulcimer that Barry had used in the previous year's soundtrack to the first Harry Palmer spy film The Ipcress File. Once again Anderson demonstrated a great ear for marrying music with imagery, a talent that would serve him well in the future. DVD REGION 1 & 2
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