Over time, spy films about the Cold War have become historical films, but they have not always been so. In 1966, when Guy Hamilton made ‘Funeral in Berlin‘, the film could have been categorised as a ‘actuality film’. Of course, actuality fiction, because it is actually the screening of a novel by Len Deighton, the second in a series of three films starring the English secret agent Harry Palmer. The first was ‘The Ipcress File‘ which had been successful. It was the decade in which the James Bond film series, which would have a much longer cinematic life, was also released. Ian Fleming and Len Deighton wrote spy novels in different manners, and the films inspired by their novels also took diverging directions. Fleming was heading for adventure and commercial entertainment where the identity of the enemies didn’t matter much, which is perhaps one of the reasons why the James Bond series continued after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Deighton was more attentive to the technical and political details of the Cold War, and the three films in this series inspired by his novels more accurately reflect the period, in a cinematic style approaching the film noir genre.
Michael Caine‘s Harry Palmer is a hero different in many ways of James Bond, who at that time was played bySean Connery. It is, if you wish, an anti-Bond. Unlike Bond, who has an impeccable record, Palmer has a dubious past, in which he was involved with the world of crime. Bond casually collects sentimental conquests, while Palmer, when he falls for a gorgeous girl, immediately smells the trap. Finally, and perhaps the most significant difference, Bond lightly uses his ‘license to kill’ while Palmer’s gun remains loaded throughout the film, even when he receives an explicit order to eliminate an opponent.
Guy Hamilton, who had previously directed ‘Goldfinger‘ in the James Bond series, changes the register with versatility and manages to create an espionage thriller in which the plot and the relationships between the characters are credible and have a greater weight than the action part (which is not completely missing either). The excellent cinematography of Otto Heller uses filming on location in the Berlin divided by the infamous wall, and those scenes have a documentary authenticity. Michael Caine, whose popularity and the success that came after owes a lot to the three films in this series, acts smarttly, with discretion and humor, the role of Palmer. I also noticed in the cast Eva Renzi as a superb Mossad agent, and Oskar Homolka, who was one of the Austrian Jewish actors who took refuge in the United States before World War II, in the role of Soviet Colonel Stok, who triggers the story, announcing his intention to defect to the West. What follows is worth watching. ‘Funeral in Berlin‘ is an interesting film for the context in which it was made, but also as entertainment for spy movie lovers and not only for them.