The Quiller Memorandum
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The Quiller Memorandum (1966) is film adaptation of an Adam Hall spy novel, starring Alec Guinness, George Segal, Max Von Sydow, and Senta Berger, and directed by Michael Anderson.
The film opens with a man walking in the dead of the night through the streets of Berlin. As he reaches the phone booth, he nervously lights a cigarette, looks around, and enters the booth. As he dials a number a single shot penetrates the glass of the booth and enters his spine, killing him instantly.
He was a second British SIS operative to be murdered in Germany by a mysterious illusive neo-nazi organization Phoenix. Enter Quiller: he is sent to berlin to investigate. There he meets his eccentric controller Pol (Guinness)a beautiful woman Inga, and a "german gentleman" Oktober--the polite, ruthless head of Phoenix, among other characters.
Quiller never carries a gun and his tactics are somehwat original: let Phonix discover he is an agent, and this way they can "get together" sooner or later.
The film is one of the most underrated spy films, and though largerly forgotten, compared to Bond films, its realism, sleek, tight script, wonderful "British" acting gives it considerable advantages.
