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Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967]
 
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Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967]

DVD ~ Michael Caine
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
RRP: £15.99
Price: £5.98 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967] + Billion Dollar Brain [DVD] [1967] + The Ipcress File [DVD] [1965]
Total RRP: £44.97
Price For All Three: £17.44

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967]
79% buy the item featured on this page:
Funeral In Berlin [DVD] [1967] 3.9 out of 5 stars (10)
£5.98
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Product details

  • Actors: Michael Caine, Oskar Homolka, Paul Hubschmid, Eva Renzi, Guy Doleman
  • Directors: Guy Hamilton
  • Writers: Evan Jones, Len Deighton
  • Producers: Charles D. Kasher, Harry Saltzman
  • Format: PAL
  • Language English, German
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: PG
  • Studio: Paramount Home Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 1 Jan 2005
  • Run Time: 98 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00005UO5X
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3,999 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

Funeral in Berlin (1967) is the sequel to 1965's The Ipcress File, 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 Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever 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 Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory). 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 Billion Dollar Brain 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?" --Paul Tonks

Synopsis

Following on from THE IPCRESS FILE, Michael Caine returns as bespectacled spy Harry Palmer in the second instalment in the Len Deighton series. A British spy is responsible for arranging the defection of a Russian officer in charge of Berlin war security. When his plan goes very wrong, he must rely on his own Cockney cunning to escape the morass of double-dealing, intrigue and beautiful, but deadly, women.

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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (5)
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Complex spy thriller set in cold war Berlin, 14 Jun 2001
By snaunton@online.ru (Moscow, Russia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Funeral In Berlin [VHS] [1967] (VHS Tape)
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.

This 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.

So 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.

Caine, 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.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not Bad, 16 Aug 2007
The Ipcress File was first-class and it was always going to be difficult to make a follow-up which was as good. Funeral in Berlin doesn't come close to the success of the earlier film, for different reasons.

The first thing that struck me was that the soundtrack was way too insistent, almost as if it were trying to set the scene, rather than let the storyline set the scene and complement it by adding to the atmosphere. It didn't work - it was scored for orchestra, and who wants a screeching brass section when they've heard the delicious, moody, low key, jazzy number from Ipcress?

Then there's Palmer: he likes to be a bit of a joker and had some splendidly dry comic lines in Ipcress, but he goes too far here - you'll notice it in the first ten minutes - gags abound and, while they may be mildly amusing (most aren't even that), they do nothing to establish the credibility of the plot or the seriousness of the actors. If you want humour, go for Pierce Brosnan in James Bond (I saw Die Another Day recently and it was full of crap jokes and innuendo. I never realised how bad an actor Brosnan was until I saw it again.) or Sid James in a Carry On film.

The plot was okay but I thought it a bit muddled, with too many things going on, so it lacked the direct simplicity of the earlier film. There are agents from Russia/East Germany, West Germany, GB and Israel all vying with one another. Hmmm! Too much.

On a positive note, the picture quality is sharp and the colours very strong, and you get a chance to see Palmer being pulled by a gorgeous bird and Guy Doleman doing his suave bit as Palmer's unflappable boss with a superb accent and a great line in withering put-downs. The grittiness of this film is Berlin in the mid-sixties - how run-down and seedy it all looked, but this was only twenty years after the war and regeneration was still proceeding.

It's good enough for an evening's entertainment, but a disappointing sequel for Palmer.
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15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellant film but why the price?, 5 July 2004
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Harry Palmer returns in this second dose of antitidote to big-budget Bondage...
Veteran Canadian movie producer Harry Saltzman ("The IPCRESS File" & "Goldfinger") re-teams with English director Guy Hamilton ("The Colditz Story" & "Goldfinger") for this... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mutt

5.0 out of 5 stars Great value
Hi,
Baught this dvd as a gift for my Son-in-Law. Great value for the money.
Published 5 months ago by J. Cowan

4.0 out of 5 stars Harry Palmer returns
After being promoted following his sterling work in unhooding his boss as a traitor and double agent - see The Ipcress File - Palmer gets an assignment to track a senior Soviet... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Lou Knee

3.0 out of 5 stars The Return of Harry Palmer
The second of the three Harry Palmer films that Caine made in the sixties - sandwiched between the superior 'Ipcress File' and the inferior 'Billion Dollar Brain' - that each had... Read more
Published 10 months ago by El Wilfendo

4.0 out of 5 stars Spies in Berlin
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. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Jordache

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as iconic as IPCRESS, but still the best of the Harry Palmer sequels
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... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Trevor Willsmer

3.0 out of 5 stars Funeral in Berlin
Being a Michael Caine fan, of his early work especially, I eagerly tore the wrapping from this, which to me at least, was a relatively unknown Title. Read more
Published on 20 May 2004 by R. Mitchell

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