Funeral in Berlin (1966)

The name Harry Saltzman may not ring a bell to the common person but for fans of James Bond Saltzman along with producing partner Albert "Cubby" Broccoli are film royalty. Saltzman and Broccoli bought the rights to novelist Ian Fleming's James Bond books and brought the sophisticated, sexy secret agent known as 007 to the big screen beginning in 1962 with DR. NO directed by Terence Young and starring a fairly new young Scottish actor named Sean Connery. The character of James Bond was a romantic, sensationalized image of a British secret agent, an inflated playboy version of author Fleming himself who worked for British intelligence during World War II. Saltzman would co-produce nine Bond films with Broccoli before selling his rights off. But many film fans may not be aware that Saltzman bought another spy property solo around the same time based on three novels by British spy author Len Deighton.  The novels which would be turned into films were THE IPCRESS FILE, FUNERAL IN BERLIN, and BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (directed by Ken Russell). Only this time, the main character was the polar opposite of James Bond, a more working-class antagonist in the Cold War era of spies and espionage named Harry (eventually called Harry Palmer in the films), a former criminal working for British intelligence. 

In 1965, the film adaptation of Deighton's first book THE IPCRESS FILE directed by Sidney J. Furie starring a new young English actor Michael Caine would be released. That same year Martin Ritt's THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom based on the novel by John Le Carre also came out.  Both Deighton and Le Carre were up and coming spy novelists who wrote more realistic, cynical stories about spies in a morally ambiguous world than Fleming.  In Deighton and Le Carre's spy world, the enemy was often someone on your side as much as the Russian or East German side. Martinis shaken not stirred and Aston Martin cars with ejector seats were nowhere to be found in their stories.  I have chosen the second film in the Harry Palmer series FUNERAL IN BERLIN to discuss because of its catchier title and it was filmed in West Berlin (yes, the Berlin Wall still separated East and West Berlin at that time). THE IPCRESS FILE is a good film, introducing us to the world of Harry Palmer as he tries to figure out who is kidnapping and brainwashing British scientists. THE MILLION DOLLAR BRAIN I know very little about. But FUNERAL IN BERLIN has a plot with some great twists and surprises. Saltzman may have wanted to show us a more down to earth spy than James Bond, but he brought in some of the best technicians from the Bond series for THE IPCRESS FILE hiring Ken Adam as Production Designer, Peter Hunt as Editor, and John Barry to compose the musical score.

For FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1966), Saltzman turned to Guy Hamilton who had just directed the best of the early Bond films with GOLDFINGER (1964). With a screenplay by Evan Jones based on Len Deighton's novel, FUNERAL IN BERLIN begins in (where else?) Berlin. We're shown the bustling, cosmopolitan West Berlin and the stark, barb wired covered East Berlin.  An East German musician makes a daring escape over the Berlin Wall, engineered by West Berlin criminal Otto Kreutzman (Gunter Meisner). Back in London, British secret agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) is called to his superior Colonel Ross's (Guy Doleman) home for a new assignment. A Russian Colonel named Stok (Oscar Homolka) stationed in East Berlin wants to defect to the West. Ross wants Palmer to run the mission.

After picking up fake passports from another British agent Hallam (Hugh Burden), Palmer flies to West Berlin where he's picked up by Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), a former criminal like Palmer who runs the Berlin sector for British intelligence. Palmer's cover in Berlin is a ladies underwear salesman. Palmer is skeptical about the defection but arranges a meeting with Col. Stok who requests that Kreutzman arrange his escape. Stok demands it be foolproof. Upon returning to the western sector, Palmer meets a model named Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi) at a bar. Samantha's a bit too friendly but Palmer spends the night with her to learn more. Palmer's certain she's a spy and hires a local German thief to ransack her apartment.  It turns out Samantha has several passports of her own.

Vulkan sets up a meeting between Harry and Kreutzman and his operatives. Harry and Kreutzman work out the details.  The plan is to stage a phony funeral and bring Stok across from East Berlin to West Berlin in a coffin. Harry and Kreutzman agree on the terms.  Harry reports back to Ross in London. Harry still has his doubts, but Ross greenlights the plan. Harry visits Hallam and picks up $20,000 in English pounds and a letter with some documents and the name Paul Louis Broum on the envelope. Harry returns to Berlin. He meets Samantha again who reveals she works for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Samantha's mission is to locate Paul Louis Broum, a Nazi war criminal working under an assumed name who stole millions of pounds of gold during the war and has stashed it away in a Swiss bank account. Before initiating the defection plan, Harry hires a German forger named Klaus to do a little job for him. 

The phony funeral begins with two hearses, paid mourners, and a hand off of the casket on a bridge in no man's land. When Harry, Vulkan, and Kreutzman's operatives open up the coffin in an abandoned warehouse, it's not the living Col. Stok they find but the dead body of another key player instead. Vulkan knocks out Harry and grabs the envelope only to have Samantha and her Israeli agents take it from Vulkan. It turns out Vulkan is Paul Louis Broum, a former Nazi who killed the real Vulkan and assumed his name. Ross orders Harry to kill Vulkan who has now become expendable. Instead, Harry tells Vulkan to disappear. Vulkan breaks into Samantha's apartment, kills one of Samantha's Mossad agents, and retrieves the papers that could incriminate him only to discover they are forgeries (remember that forger that Harry hired to do a job for him?). The race is on as Vulkan seeks the real papers so he can get across the wall back to East Berlin while Harry and Samantha try to stop him while avoiding getting killed themselves.

Harry Palmer and James Bond are on different spectrums of the spy game although there are some similarities (and differences) between the two British agents. Both work for men who don't always disclose everything to their agents. M from the James Bond films is older, probably worked for the OSS during War II. He's a cold father figure to Bond who occasionally warns Bond to be careful. Harry reports to the more ruthless Col. Ross. Ross holds Harry's criminal past against him, essentially blackmailing him to serve his queen and country. Ross has the same hold on the Berlin Station chief Vulkan as we find out later in FUNERAL IN BERLIN. Ross doesn't mind sacrificing an agent for the end game, a fact Harry is acutely aware of.

Bond has the beautiful women, the fancy cars, and the gadgets.  Harry wears glasses and has a girlfriend sleeping over who may be a co-worker, a working-class gal like Harry at the beginning of FUNERAL IN BERLIN.  When model Samantha singles him out at a bar in Berlin, it raises Harry's suspicions.  Harry's not accustomed to that style of woman. Harry doesn't drive an Aston Martin. In fact, Harry asks Ross for a loan to buy a car early on. After the mission is complete, Ross offers to buy the car for Harry but Harry declines. He knows Ross will use it as leverage in the future. There are no gadgets for Harry, no secret rooms where Bond's co-worker Q is testing new lethal gadgets.  Harry has to sign on the dotted line for the defection money and the secret envelope from the smarmy Hallam.  Harry's co-workers are just regular people: some old, some bald, no flirting Miss Moneypenny anywhere.

FUNERAL IN BERLIN captures adroitly the shifting alliances and loyalties in the world of spycraft. Governments working with criminals or ex-Nazis or even the enemy if necessary.  Harry Palmer is just a minnow in this sea of sharks.  Harry's trying to stay one step ahead of the Russians and Mossad as well as his own superior Col. Ross who sees his agents merely as pawns in an elaborate chess game. At various times, Harry is with and against Samantha; with and against Vulkan.  For Harry, it's either work for Ross or go back to jail.  Harry puts his criminal past to his advantage.  Harry uses what little clout he has to persuade an exasperated German police official Reinhardt (Thomas Holztmann) to release both a burglar and a forger to assist him with his mission. Both moves pay off for Harry. The burglary tips Harry off that Samantha is more than just a pretty face.  The forged documents buy Harry some time and his life as he begins to unravel the twists and turns of the plot for FUNERAL IN BERLIN. 

Just as the role of James Bond would kick start the career of Sean Connery, the Harry Palmer films would be the launching pad of the versatile Michael Caine's career. Caine plays Harry as an unassuming, self-deprecating spy, trying to survive both his Cold War enemies and his own enigmatic boss. Caine would appear in several other good 1960s British films including Lewis Gilbert's ALFIE (1966), Ronald Neame's GAMBIT (also 1966), and the Peter Collinson's cult caper film THE ITALIAN JOB (1969). Caine would heed the call to Hollywood in the 1970s appearing in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's SLEUTH (1972) with Laurence Olivier; Richard Attenborough's star-studded war film A BRIDGE TOO FAR (1977), and Herbert Ross's comedy CALIFORNIA SUITE (1978) written by Neil Simon.  Caine has worked with celebrated directors including Brian DePalma (DRESSED TO KILL), Woody Allen (HANNAH AND HER SISTERS), and more recently has become director Christopher Nolan's good luck charm in most of Nolan's films including THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) and INTERSTELLAR (2014). Ironically, Caine and Connery would appear together in the excellent adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (1975) directed by the legendary John Huston. 

The supporting cast for FUNERAL IN BERLIN is very international, adding to the authenticity of the story.  Oskar Homolka (Austrian) plays the Russian colonel Stok as a gregarious grandfather type with a hint of malice to him.  Homolka appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's SABOTAGE (1936) and Howard Hawks BALL OF FIRE (1941) among many other films. The role of Samantha Steel was originally to be played by American Anjanette Comer but she fell ill before filming began and German actress Eva Renzi was cast instead. Swiss actor Paul Hubschmid plays Johnny Vulkan, the double agent that Harry and Samantha must stop. Hubschmid and Renzi who play adversaries in the film would be married in 1967 after FUNERAL IN BERLIN and get divorced in 1983. Film fans may recognize German actor Gunter Meisner who plays West Berlin criminal Otto Kreutzman from another film made in Germany five years later.  Meisner played Willy Wonka's candy rival Mr. Slugworth in WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) starring Gene Wilder as Willie Wonka and filmed in Munich, Germany.

Director Guy Hamilton was no stranger to stories about blurred alliances and shadowy criminals whether it was the Cold War or Post World War II. Hamilton was Assistant Director on one of the greatest post-war noirs of all time Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN (1948) from an original script by Graham Greene that introduced us to the opportunistic black marketeer Harry Lime (Orson Welles), selling diluted penicillin on the black market, killing innocent victims including children in Vienna after World War II. In THE THIRD MAN, Vienna has been split into four sectors: American, British, Russian, and French. In FUNERAL BERLIN, it's East and West Berlin, divided by an ugly communist wall. Harry Lime is a bit like Otto Kreutzman in FUNERAL IN BERLIN.  Kreutzman will assist people to escape from East Berlin to West Berlin for a price even if it means killing innocent citizens like smothering an elderly man to use for the fake funeral. Director Hamilton himself worked for the Royal Navy during World War II, ferrying secret agents into France and bringing back downed RAF pilots to England.

FUNERAL IN BERLIN is one of those classic film time capsules, snapshots of West and East Berlin in the moment in 1966. Hamilton and his crew show the capitalistic and decadent side of West Berlin. Several scenes are shot with the giant Mercedes Benz building and symbol in the background, watching over the city.  Another scene has Harry and Vulkan having dinner at a burlesque club with female impersonators providing the entertainment. The filmmakers did shoot a scene at the actual Checkpoint Charlie with Michael Caine, but they had to film with a long lens as Russian soldiers across the Wall were using mirrors to reflect the sun to disrupt the filming. Berlin during the Cold War still fascinates filmmakers today with recent films like ATOMIC BLONDE (2017) with Charlize Theron in Berlin in 1989 right before the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Epix TV series BERLIN STATION (2016 - 2019) with a modern take on spying in Berlin in today's present political climate.

A big thanks to the Canadian born Producer Harry Saltzman who brought to us (along with producing partner Albert "Cubby" Broccoli) the greatest secret agent in entertainment history in James Bond but paved the way for more realistic portrayals of intelligence agents with the London based Harry Palmer. Like Sean Connery, Michael Caine would grow weary of the role, not wishing to be typecast, and move on to other projects. FUNERAL IN BERLIN is the apex of the series for me, mixing Cold War politics, a divided city, and Agatha Christie twists for an entertaining, spine-tingling spy film. 

Au Revoir les Enfants (1987)

When I was in college, I wrote a paper on the French New Wave, a period in the late 50s and early 60s when young French directors like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Alain Resnais were pushing the envelope and boundaries with films that played with editing, cinematography and linear storytelling. Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS (1959) and JULES AND JIM (1962), Godard's BREATHLESS (1960), and Renais's HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (1959) and LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) were all films made during this French New Wave. Even though I wrote and researched the paper, I think the only film I had actually seen was BREATHLESS.  But there's one French filmmaker who was not considered part of the French New Wave even though he was the same age as Francois Truffaut and his first big hit ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958) came out a year before the French New Wave.  That filmmaker was Louis Malle.

Louis Malle was one of those rare foreign film directors who made successful films in France like THE LOVERS (1958) but also was able to break into American cinema.  Malle directed the controversial PRETTY BABY (1978) starring Keith Carradine, Susan Sarandon and Brooke Shields as a teenage prostitute in 1917 New Orleans.  Malle followed that up with the highly acclaimed ATLANTIC CITY (1980) starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon. Malle would also be married to American actress Candace Bergen. Malle would return to his French roots in 1987 to direct an autobiographical story from his youth at a Catholic boarding school in German occupied France during World War II called AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS (GOODBYE, CHILDREN). I was just rediscovering foreign films around that time.  Wim Wenders German film WINGS OF DESIRE (also 1987) about an angel who wishes to become human was the one that I saw. I remember the posters for AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS but had no idea what the film was about.

Written and directed by Louis Malle based on an actual event he witnessed as a school boy, AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS opens at a train station in Paris in January 1944.  12 year old Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) says goodbye to his mother Madamoiselle Quentin (Francine Racette) as he heads back to boarding school after the Christmas break in the countryside outside of Paris along with his older brother Francois (Stanislas Carre de Malberg). Many affluent Parisian families send their sons to school away from the French capital to avoid bombings. Julien and his classmates return to St. John of the Cross Carmelite Convent, a Catholic all-boys school run by Father Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud) and Father Michael (Francois Berleand). On the first day of class, Father Jean escorts a new boy to the classroom Jean Bonnet (Raphael Fejto). Since he's the new kid, the other boys tease Jean mercifully.  Julien notices there's something different about Jean but he can't put his finger on it.  Jean doesn't know the Catholic prayers and he doesn't eat pork. 

Julien, who's one of the smarter kids in his class, begins to see Jean as his intellectual adversary. After Julien struggles at his piano lesson with the pretty young French teacher Ms. Davenne (French actress Irene Jacob in her first film), he watches Jean play beautifully for her.  Father Jean asks Julien to be nice to Bonnet. A couple of French collaborators make a surprise inspection of the school. Father Jean quietly whisks Bonnet away. Julien snoops around Jean's belongings. He finds a family photo and a book inscribed to Jean Kippelstein. Although he doesn't know much about them, Julien realizes that Bonnet is Jewish. Julien quizzes Jean about his family. He learns Jean's father is a prisoner and he hasn't heard from his mother in three months.

The school breaks into two teams for an outdoor activity to find a treasure hidden in the woods.  Julien and Jean escape capture from the rival team but get lost in the woods. Julien finds the treasure then reconnects with Jean.  While walking back on a road, the two boys are picked up by a German patrol and taken back to the boarding school. While recovering from exposure in the infirmary, Julien reveals to Jean he knows his secret. Parents Weekend arrives and Julien's mother comes to visit.  She takes her sons Julien and Francois to her favorite restaurant. The Quentin's invite Jean along. While dining, they witness two French collaborators harass a distinguished, older Jewish patron before a table of Germans soldiers intervene, not wishing to have the visiting French families upset. 

The war creeps closer to its end but an event happens at the school that will set in motion a series of terrible consequences.  Joseph (Francois Negret), the lame kitchen helper who buys and sells items from the students on the black market is caught stealing by the cook Madamoiselle Perrin (Jacqueline Paris). Father Jean fires the young man. An air raid sends the teachers and students to shelter but Julien and Jean play hooky. They read a passage from the erotic Arabian Nights and Jean teaches Julien a fun piano piece they play together. A few days later during math class, a Gestapo agent Dr. Muller (Peter Fitz) enters the class looking for Jean Kippelstein.  At first, no one says any thing but Jean gives himself up. The Germans round up two other Jewish students as well as Father Jean for harboring the students. Before Jean is escorted away, he gives his books to Julien. Julien discovers that Joseph is the snitch who gave up the Jewish kids and Father Jean to the Germans as payback for his dismissal. In a voice over as Jean waves goodbye to Julien for the final time (the voice is director Louis Malle), an adult Julien tells the audience that Jean and the other boys died at Auschwitz and Father Jean died in another camp before the war ended. 

AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is based on an incident director Louis Malle witnessed while attending an all-boys boarding school in Fontainebleau outside of Paris at the end of World War II. The character of Julien represents Malle. Malle's recollections of the school, the priests, and his fellow classmates is perfect. The boys all in their formal Catholic school uniforms with navy blue berets and yellow and blue ties. The horrible conditions with the boys having little to eat at school and no heat or hot water. The tough but compassionate priests and teachers trying to go about their normal duties while their country is occupied by the Germans, often teaching during air raids and blackouts. 

Malle captures perfectly the complicated lives of boys on the verge of becoming young men while dealing with a world war and separation from their families. He shows us the playground politics of bullying, friendship, and competitiveness.  The boys play a game of last man standing on stilts, jousting with each other until only one remains upright. Just outside the view of the teachers, contraband like cigarettes and homemade jars of jam are swapped between the students and the kitchen help Joseph.  It's an all-boys Catholic school but it feels like a prisoner of war camp. The Catholic priests run the school but on the fringes are the German army.  Early in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS the Germans are just on the periphery. A single German comes to school for confession.  A group of German soldiers leaving a bath house as the students arrive for their first warm bath in weeks.  But gradually, as Jean's identity and freedom becomes riskier and riskier, Germans and French Collaborators become more prevalent, and the noose becomes tighter around young Jean Kippelstein's neck. 

A theme of AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is Julien's loss of innocence. Julien's a good kid, a bit conceited. In the film's opening scene, he professes to his mother he hates her. But when she comes to visit him weeks later on Parents Weekend, it's evident Julien's a Momma's boy. His bed wetting episodes may be caused by his separation from his parents.  After a rough start with the new student, Julien discovers a kindred spirit in Jean Bonnet aka Kippelstein. They both love the classics like The Three Musketeers. Julien realizes how lucky he is to have a family compared to Jean's situation. In Julien's secluded world, he knows there's a war going on and the Germans are the bad guys but he's not aware of the horrors they can commit like his older brother Francois.  As a Catholic, it seems he's never met a Jewish boy before or knows how dangerous it is to be Jewish during this period. It's only when the Gestapo come to the school and take Jean and Father Jean away that Julien comes face to face with pure evil. An evil punctuated by Julien's discovery that Joseph snitched on the Jewish students and the headmaster, leading to their eventual deaths right before the war ends.

I would argue that AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is as devastating a film about the Holocaust as Steven Spielberg's SCHINDLER'S LIST (1990) minus the graphic depictions of the Nazis brutality. Director Malle doesn't need the big canvas of the Warsaw ghettos or the Auschwitz concentration camp to show the Nazis malevolence. Their terror seeps even into small towns and boarding schools. Like THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959), LES ENFANTS is a more intimate look at one young Jewish adolescent trying have a normal life at an all-boys school with death close on his heels. Malle builds the tension slowly, methodically. There are some close calls for young Jean but when their math teacher updates the class on the progress of the Allied armies, it looks like Jean might outlast the Germans.  But the treachery of Joseph to get back at the priests for his expulsion spells doom for the clandestine Jewish students.  The ultimate tragedy is that people like Anne Frank, Jean Kippelstein, and thousands of others needlessly perished when the war was lost for Germany and there was no need to continue this hideous genocide.  

The success of films with young actors is all in the casting. Malle gets it right with Gaspard Manesse as Julien Quentin and Raphael Fejto as Jean Bonnet aka Kippelstein in AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS. At times, the two boys look very similar in their navy blue berets, pale skin, and rosy cheeks. On the LES ENFANTS poster, the boys look like mirror images of one another. But Fejto is much taller than Manesse. Julien's shorter stature doesn't keep him from being mean early in the film. He uses his smarts and his tongue to bully Jean.  But Julien will develop a friendship with Jean that will be tragically cut short. Jean's tallness makes him more awkward physically, but he excels at math and music. We know that Julien representing director Malle will become a filmmaker.  We'll never know what greatness Jean might have become.  He could have become a world-renowned mathematician or an accountant like his father. 

AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS is mostly a male cast, but special mention should go to a couple of female performers. Francine Racette as Julien's doting mother is only in a couple of scenes, but her presence brings out a more sympathetic side to Julien who loves her more than he lets on. For a few brief hours, Mrs. Quentin captivates Jean, reminding him of the important roles that mothers play in shaping their sons.  As the piano teacher Ms. Davenne, French actress Irene Jacob makes her film debut. As the only pretty young woman in this world of male priests, teachers, and students, the innocent Ms. Ravenne is oblivious to all the lovelorn looks and feelings the students have for her.  Jacob would become a favorite of acclaimed Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski appearing in his films THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (1991) and RED (1994).

Director Malle would visit this period of 1944 France earlier in his career with the film LACOMBE, LUCIEN (1974) about an 18 year old French boy (Pierre Blaise) who collaborates with the Nazis and falls in love with a Jewish girl (Aurore Clement). It might have been Malle's first stab at trying to get his creative mind around his boarding school memory that had haunted him most of his life. As depressing as AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS may sound, the film has many magical, light moments.  One of my favorites is when the priests and teachers show the students a Charlie Chaplin short film called THE IMMIGRANT (1917). The images of the students and priests and teachers laughing at Chaplin's comic genius are priceless, a brief interlude from the German oppression surrounding the school. 

In the tradition of films about all boys school students like Peter Brook's LORD OF THE FLIES (1963) or Peter Weir's DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989), AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS captures the world of an all boys boarding school during a time of war.  AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS would win the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1987 but miss out on the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards losing to the Danish film BABETTE'S FEAST.  This French gem is filmmaking at its finest, a tragic real life incident told by a French master named Louis Malle who needed to exorcise this memory that had haunted him. The film world is a rich place because of his personal film.