The Quiller Memorandum (1966), starring George Segal, Alec Guiness - March 19, 2019

[oildude]

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) will be released on Blu-ray by Twilight Time on March 19, 2019. This will be a limited edition of 3000 copies.

This will be from a new 4K transfer.

From IMDb.....In the West Berlin of the 1960s, two British agents are killed by a Nazi group, prompting British Intelligence to dispatch agent Quiller to investigate.

Good article about the film from TCM: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/87505.../articles.html



Directed by Michael Anderson, whose filmography includes Around the World in 80 Days, Logan's Run, The Dam Busters, Orca, Chase a Crooked Shadow, The Shoes of the Fisherman and several episodes of TV's The Martian Chronicles.

Starring:

George Segal (The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, King Rat, The Bridge at Remagen, The Hot Rock, The Owl and the Pussycat, Fun with Dick and Jane)

Alec Guiness (Star Wars, Doctor Zhivago, Our Man in Havana, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Ladykillers)

Max von Sydow (The Exorcist, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly, Hawaii, Hour of the Wolf, The Emigrants, Minority Report, Three Days of the Condor, to name but a few of his over 150 films)

Senta Berger (Major Dundee, The Glory Guys, Cast a Giant Shadow, and many European films)

George Sanders (All About Eve, Village of the Damned, Rebecca, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Kremlin Letter, Samson and Delilah, and many more, including the voice of Shere Khan the Tiger in Disney's The Jungle Book)





Original Trailer

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) ORIGINAL TRAILER [HD 1080p] - YouTube

[McCrutchy]

Excellent news, especially as it's to be a new 4K master. I hope Twilight Time can either port some or all of the Network extras, or at least provide some new video extras or a new audio commentary, although having John Barry's isolated score will be a great bonus in and of itself.

[Fred Sliman]

March is the month of repairs for me Between this and The Big Fix. I’m more of an easy grader type for blus than some but the Network I had in my player for about 3 minutes was the worst I’ve seen, quickly replaced for the showing by the Fox DVD. A proper version of this will be great to have.

[javi92]

I'm in for a new 4K master.

[John Earls Umbrella]

Count me in even though I’ll need a loan to pay for it.

[L'armée des ombres]

Special Features: Isolated Score Track / Audio Commentary with Film Historians Eddy Friedfeld and Lee Pfeiffer / Original Theatrical Trailer

[gates70]

I'm in!

[amputd]

So what’s the scoop on this one? I’ve read conflicting reviews about how good the film is. Leaning towards getting it but need a little encouragement.

[lemonski]

Originally Posted by amputd

So what’s the scoop on this one? I’ve read conflicting reviews about how good the film is. Leaning towards getting it but need a little encouragement.

Probably won’t help, but I liked it despite the kind of mixed reviews it seems to get. It’s pretty slow paced, but I dig 60’s spy films generally and the Berlin locations are really interesting to see. When it came to the crunch to pre-order with TT though, I just couldn’t do it.

[James Luckard]

I saw it years ago and remember loving the period West Berlin locations, but it was suuuuper slow. Imagine a 60s James Bond film... then imagine the opposite, and that's this. It's a spy movie as written by Harold Pinter, so it's highly unconventional.

[John Earls Umbrella]

I really like the film but I’d like to know this is a substantial improvement over the poor Network release before pulling the trigger, especially at this inflated price.

[Aclea]

They'd really have to puill all the stops out to be worse than the Network disc: that may well be the very worst transfer I've ever seen (their DVD was much, much less bad even though that was DNR-a-go-goed into soft focus) - it was so bad I couldn't even finish the disc.

My take on the film:



The Quiller Memorandum was originally intended by the Rank Organisation to launch a series to replace the Harry Palmer films after Harry Saltzman took them to Paramount and subsequently United Artists after both studios dropped out of Saltzman's Battle of Britain. It got off to a good start at the box-office but never caught on outside the big cities, although the BBC did resurrect the character for a short-lived series with Michael Jayston in the 70s. Ironically not only filming but also some locations overlapped with Funeral in Berlin, resulting in at least one bizarre photo-opportunity of the two jaded spies happily swapping notes.

The battleground is political ideologies again, but unlike other sixties spies and despite being set in West Berlin, Quiller isn't concerned with cold war politics or communist spy rings (you don't even see the Berlin Wall) but instead with the far right. Well, unless you saw it in Germany on its original release, that is, where Max Von Sydow's cabal of neo-Nazis became communists in the dubbing process. Its use of locations is exemplary, the Nazi focus on healthy minds and healthy bodies working its way into the choice of settings, from swimming pools to schools, and the influence and flow of history illustrated by the die-hard neo-Nazis hiding in the bombed out ruins of the old Germany while the next generation of fascists work out of gleaming modern buildings that are part of the rebuilt Germany. George Segal's Quiller is even briefed in the Olympic stadium Hitler had built for the 1936 Games by Alec Guinness's ever so slightly camp salami-munching cockney.

Perhaps alone among spy thrillers, this is the one where everyone knows the screenwriter's name but virtually no-one remembers the director's. Harold Pinter's often sadistically playful script is without doubt a cut above, preferring unspoken deceptions and more insidious mind games to action scenes. Indeed, the first interrogation scene between a drugged Segal and a quick-thinking Von Sydow is a particularly smart and convincing bit of wordplay as the one tries to steer the questions away from the subject with thoughts of sex only for the other to use them to lead the cross-examination back to the point, while the rematch at the end of the film sets the spy a far more effective moral conundrum.



Certainly as Michael Anderson's reputation has diminished and Pinter's grown it's become one of the few films where all credit has gone to the screenwriter, but Anderson's direction is surprisingly strong, particularly if you see the film in its original Scope ratio. John Barry's score is quietly impressive too, eschewing the downbeat jazz of The Ipcress File and the boldness of his Bond scores for a haunting loneliness that helps set Quiller apart from his more popular predecessors.

[ptb2010]

Originally Posted by amputd

So what’s the scoop on this one? I’ve read conflicting reviews about how good the film is. Leaning towards getting it but need a little encouragement.

I loved it when I first saw it, and revisiting is always good. Seeing a Berlin, now completely disappeared, is a joy, as are the actors, even those in smaller parts, like Guinness and Helpmann. It’s a good plot too. Well worth your time! Just hope as others have said it’s a really good transfer as the Network one is like a bad vhs!

[amputd]

Here’s a review of the disc. Sounds really good!


https://trailersfromhell.com/the-quiller-memorandum/

[John Earls Umbrella]

Got my copy today. Excellent transfer that finally does the film justice. Well done TT!

[Aclea]

Got mine today. After decades of poor transfers, capped by the atrocious UK and French Blus, TT's release is finally the absolutely glorious transfer the film deserves. Well worth the long wait.

[SpaceBlackKnight]

Worth noting that the transfer here is 4k resto of what's reported to be an Internegative by Fox (and opens with their period correct logo), wereas the Network UK BD features a 2k IP scan of the UK version (opening with the Rank Gongsman) provided by rightsholder ITV.

[Monterey Jack]

This is $15 shipped on Amazon right now, for those who are interested.