The Russian general in charge of security at the Berlin wall wants to defect to Britain. Harry Palmer is sent to check him out and makes arraignments with a German named Kreutzman to fake a funeral and bring him over. All is not as it seems though and when he is picked up by a beautiful Israeli spy Harry starts to suspect there's more to it then just a defection.
Director Guy Hamilton, in between Goldfinger and Battle of Britain, takes a turn at the Palmer franchise. More seriously done than his other spy movies, all Bonds, Hamilton sticks with the Czech cinematographer Otto Heller who made The Ipcress File which means that the low shot, sideways angles that are the hallmark of the first film are here too, though some of the snappier dialogue is missing. Heller's earlier titles included The Lady Killers, Victim and Peeping Tom. One story to come out of the production is that, during filming in Berlin, Russian border guards would use mirrors to disrupt filming meaning some takes had to be done over and over or from much greater distances than first intended.
Though superior in many ways to the spy stories that would follow it, this film was somewhat eclipsed by the others. The world didn't want the drabness of the Wall, men in macs and glasses, it wanted sex, fast cars and gadgets and Guy Hamilton, together with Harry Saltzman, would give them just that. Bond was here to stay and it would be another 13 years before John le Carré's little man George Smiley would be on our screens, dragging us back to the not very glamorous reality of the British Secret Service.
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