‘Funeral in Berlin’ or — Bored Stiff?
Sitting down to watch ‘Funeral in Berlin’ (1966) last night I was curious if it would be as visually flamboyant as Sidney J. Furie’s ‘The Ipcress File’ (1965). Considering the film was directed by arch visual stylist (‘Sarcasm’ noun — the use of irony to mock or convey contempt) Guy Hamilton I was curious to find out.
The plot revolves around Harry Palmer’s (Michael Caine) attempts to arrange the defection of a high ranking Soviet intelligence officer into West Berlin. To achieve this Palmer enlists the help of Berlin’s criminal underworld who have ways of smuggling people over the wall, for a price. Yet when some forged identity papers turn out to be in the name of a deceased war criminal and a sexy young woman who picks Harry up one night turns out to have friends in Mossad then chances are this might not go according to plan… if this even IS the plan.
Sounds exciting, right? Well, it might SOUND exciting but it certainly isn’t exciting to watch because ‘Funeral in Berlin’ is visually tedious to the point of being soporific; seriously, if a mug of Horlicks could be a movie then it would look exactly like this!
Countless shots are simply waist-high and static providing hardly any optical energy or thrust to the movie. There is one shot that’s quite inventive where the camera looks up into a telescope lens but it was such a jolt that made me want to immediately get to my feet and give the movie a standing ovation purely because it had actually done something interesting.
The story also has to take some of the blame with it feeling like sub-standard John Le Carré as it deals with some of the same issues — the Berlin Wall, the fallout from WW II, defection etc — as, say, ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold’ (1965) but with none of the intellectual heft or impact. Even Palmer himself has a boring role, being more a middle manager than a spy with him often subcontracting his work out to others. This isn’t a terribly exciting movie. Near the end a character says — “We have to go over the wall… slowly”. This line sums up the entire film. Plus it’s not until an hour in that something finally interesting happens but by this time it all feels a little too late and, even then, when a big reveal is revealed it is also quickly dismissed and, hence, anti-climatic.
The good news, and there is some good news here, is that ‘Funeral in Berlin’ isn’t a terrible movie. It’s an easy, if unexciting, watch and even though it often bored me it never irritated or totally lost me. It does have some nice camera work to be fair, but it is intermittent as opposed to consistent. The script has a few decent lines and Palmer’s final order is quite chilling with Caine’s reaction to it nicely handled. It’s just a shame that it all feels so lackluster (and when you have Ken Adam designing your movie then being visually “lackluster” takes real effort!). ‘Funeral in Berlin’ is an appropriate title because, at times, this movie can be as inert as a fucking corpse.
Okay I know, it might seem as though I’m being unfair to Guy Hamilton and giving him a bit of a kicking (which I am) but I just like my movies to be visually interesting and exciting. Hopefully, the next in the Harry Palmer series, ‘Billion Dollar Brain’ (1967), will be directed by someone with slightly more extravagantly visual flair, and that director is… hang on, let’s look this up… ah, here it is — Ken Russell??!!!!
