FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967]

Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967]
enlarge	Director: Guy Hamilton Actors: Michael Caine, Oskar Homolka, Paul Hubschmid, Eva Renzi, Guy Doleman Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment Category: DVD List Price: ~~£15.99~~ Buy New: £1.80 as of 22/11/2009 00:48 GMT details You Save: £14.19 (89%) New (17) Used (2) from £1.80 Seller: zenfromzen Rating: 10 reviews Sales Rank: 4919 Format: PAL Languages: English (Original Language), German (Original Language) Rating: Parental Guidance Region: 2 Discs: 1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 98 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5014437815736 ASIN: B00005UO5X Theatrical Release Date: March 17, 1967 Release Date: January 1, 2005 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Editorial Reviews: Amazon.co.uk Review IFuneral in Berlin/I (1967) is the sequel to 1965's IThe Ipcress File/I, again featuring Michael Caine as reluctant spy Harry Palmer. It was clearly the filmmakers' intention to make Palmer a harder-nosed James Bond, and director Guy Hamilton was brought to this project in between IGoldfinger/I and IDiamonds Are Forever/I for that purpose. There's espionage intrigue, easy women (Eva Renzi as Samantha Steel), and gunplay. But without the gadgetry, one-liners, or even the John Barry score of the first movie, the Bond comparison runs dry. Against the backdrop of a bombed-out industrial wasteland that was Berlin in the mid-Sixties, Palmer is sent to facilitate the defection of Col. Stock (Oscar Homolka). Numerous sub-plots weave together involving indifferent chief Ross (Guy Doleman from IPCRESS), mission aide Johnnie Volkon (Paul Hubschmid), and the untrustworthy Kreutzman (Günter Meisner, who was more memorable as Slugworth in IWilly Wonka and The Chocolate Factory/I). It all comes down to revealing who's working for whom and who's really defecting in the set-piece funeral of the title. The main reason the series continued (Ken Russell's OTT IBillion Dollar Brain/I came next) was the commanding presence of Caine. It's fun to hear him try German, and he manages a few subtle comic gems, such as when a waiter asks "Bitte mein heir?" and he replies, "No. Lager please", but the best moment of characterisation recalling the womanising Palmer of Len Deighton's novels is the put down guaranteed to win any woman: "You're useless in the kitchen. Why don't you go back to bed?" --IPaul Tonks/I

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 10 1 2 Next » Excellant film but why the price? July 5, 2004 15 out of 21 found this review helpful This is an awesome film but can't get my head around amazon pricing it so highly, although amazon are usually amazing on deals why the extreme charge for a classic but not blockbuster film? Anyway buy it, because it is a genious of a film. Great value September 6, 2009 J. Cowan Hi, br /Baught this dvd as a gift for my Son-in-Law. Great value for the money. Complex spy thriller set in cold war Berlin June 14, 2001 snaunton@online.ru (Moscow, Russia) 29 out of 31 found this review helpful As usual the machiavellian Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) summons Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) at the most inconvenient time. So it is on a Saturday that the unwilling British spy and former thief has to leave a girl and fly to Berlin. A senior Soviet officer wishes to defect. Harry is not fooled, not at first. But events tumble over themselves in an ever more complex plot, involving Harry's seduction, the machinations of Soviet and Israeli intelligence services, the private conspiracies of British agents, German escape agents and a reconstructed Belsen guard. Nothing very good comes of all this in the end. There are winners, but not the obvious ones.pThis fine production is from a golden period of British spy fiction and spy films. Harry Palmer represents a character typical of 1960s Britain, not a public school and Oxford hero of the 1950s, no distinguished service as an officer in the War. He is working class, cockney, cynical and rootless, doing it for the money and to keep himself out of gaol. The only character more cynical than Harry is Ross, an officer with a public school and Oxford background. This film does not come from an age of belief. The only character with any real convictions, Eva Renzi's Samantha Steel, is the most terrifyingly ruthless of them all.pSo what does happen in Berlin? Is the defection of Colonel Stock (Oskar Homolka) real, a joke, or something more sinister? Who cares? Suddenly the action centres around greed for Jewish gold stolen by a Nazi and stashed in a Swiss bank. Just about everyone, it seems, is involved in some way and most seem to want the loot. Tension grips the audience, as it struggles to keep up with the twists and turns of Len Deighton's plot, as coincidence piles on coincidence, mystery on mystery, until the final resolution. In the end, Harry keeps his job, though little satisfaction it gives him.pCaine, so often underrated, turns in another admirable performance as Harry Palmer, his cynicism just sufficiently moderated with professionalism and tinged with reluctant humanity. Homolka is a wonderfully entertaining, utterly devious, as the old Bolshevik. The other characters are well-played, although Paul Hubschmid is rather colourless as Johnny Vulkan. This is well-made film both entertains and keeps the mind engaged with its involved plot. Not as iconic as IPCRESS, but still the best of the Harry Palmer sequels February 18, 2009 Trevor Willsmer (London, England) Funeral in Berlin, the first of the Harry Palmer sequels saw producer Harry Saltzman moving the series from Rank to Paramount (who initially promised to produce his Battle of Britain epic) and a bigger budget that allowed location shooting in Berlin. Along the way some of the dog-eared individuality of the Ipcress File, with director Guy Hamilton providing a more conventionally efficient visual style than Sidney J. Furie's askew imagery and Evan Jones screenplay moving the story more into mainstream sixties thriller territory. If it's still not as big as Bond or as outrageously satirical as the subsequent Billion Dollar Brain, it's closer to a more overtly commercial John Le Carre, with femme fatales, shootouts and a twisting plot full of double-crosses as the working classy finds himself assigned to arrange the defection of Oscar Homolka's playful but deadly Russian general. If it's never quite as memorable or as iconic as Ipcress - it's Cold War setting seems almost cosily nostalgic today - it's certainly the best of the four follow-ups (there were also two dire 90s TV movies), and Paramount's 2.35:1 widescreen transfer offers better picture quality than it's predecessor if only because the film was shot on a better widescreen system giving them better material to work with. The only extra is the theatrical trailer. Spies in Berlin March 25, 2009 Jordache The key to Berlin during the cold war was The Stasi, the east German secret police, as infamous and more brutal than their masters, the Russian KGB. I hoped Funeral In Berlin would, in Michael Caine's inimitable way, show Berlin as it had been before the infamous wall was removed, but I felt it missed the mark, as The Stasi and its brutality, as well as its efficiency, played little part in the movie. Caine's portrayal of Harry Palmer, the long suffering British Spy, was everything I expected, cocky, humorous, and as with the better Ipcress File, very very watchable. However, I think, Harry Palmer would have had an infinitely more difficult time in the Berlin of that era, and had this been used would have given a more gripping movie. The moody Spy Who Came In From The Cold movie, caught the atmosphere of East Germany, and Burton's portrayal of the used spy Alec Leamas added to the flavour of the hopelessness and desperation of the place, whereas Funeral In Berlins east German seemed pale by comparison , and the real east Berlin was lost in the movie, for me. But as always a great performance by Caine, who could only be Harry Palmer. Showing reviews 1-5 of 10 1 2 Next »

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