Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		2.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Funeral in Berlin Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 11, 2020

Note: Paramount is offering several older films which are being released on BD-R through Amazon, but which are reportedly (based on our Forum) available as pressed discs from other retailers. This review disc came from Amazon, and our link points to Amazon, so the spec states BD-R.

The first few years of the sixties were among the most epochal of the 20th century, this despite the fact that earlier in the century, the globe had been embroiled in two World Wars. Just think about all of the unbelievable things that occurred in just the United States from around 1960 to, say, 1964 or 1965, a list which includes a nuclear showdown with Cuba (and/or the Soviet Union), the assassination of a President, a burgeoning Civil Rights movement, increased volatility in Vietnam, and (just for good measure and perhaps in happier news) the arrival of The Beatles. While probably not in the same “league” as some of these other events, one of the cooler phenomena, and one that was certainly global in scope, was another “arrival” from the British Isles: namely, James Bond in the form of Dr. No in 1962 and then arguably even more sensationally in Goldfinger in 1964. It may be hard for those who weren’t around when these films came out to realize what a huge impact they had, but one piece of evidence might be the absolutely huge number of other spy or secret agent properties that suddenly starting appearing on both movie and television screens in the wake of the first two James Bond films. By the fall of 1964, American television viewers were being treated to shows like The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the next few years saw a virtual avalanche of properties featuring suave undercover operatives who typically had access to lots of fancy gadgets, not to mention lots of curvaceous females (even if some of them were occasionally painted gold). In that regard, relatively soon after Goldfinger had stormed the international cinematic beaches along with Fort Knox, there started appearing more "serious" spy films that ostensibly sought to proffer a more "realistic" account of what working for an intelligence organization might be like. Two 1965 films were paradigms of that effort, with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold being culled from a novel by John le Carré, and The Ipcress File being culled from a novel by Len Deighton.

Le Carré famously had an intelligence background himself, something that lent a perceived imprimatur of authenticity to his works, and there's little doubt that The Spy Who Came in From the Cold is the more sober of the two 1965 films. But Deighton had at least a military background, and if parts of The Ipcress File were a bit more farfetched, it still had an almost paranoid demeanor that was quite a bit different from the James Bond milieu. That paranoia is still evident, if arguably a bit toned down, in Funeral in Berlin , which sees Michael Caine reprising his role of agent Harry Palmer from The Ipcress File. It's probably no coincidence that this 1966 film, having seen the global sensation that Goldfinger became, and perhaps not so coincidentally because Funeral in Berlin is helmed by Guy Hamilton, who used this film as his Goldfinger directing follow up, makes one concession to the "Bond idiom": Funeral in Berlin features more than one gorgeous woman who seems to be preternaturally interested in an otherwise kind of almost drab Harry Palmer, a guy who has to put on his glasses to answer a phone.

In a way, ironically Funeral in Berlin is somewhat more like The Spy Who Came in From the Cold than The Ipcress File was, since it, too, features a divided Berlin as a central element, and also has a labyrinthine plot that sees several overlapping elements combine as the plot progresses. Harry is sent to Berlin with an ostensible mission of helping a Soviet colonel named Stok (Oskar Homolka) defect from East Berlin to the west. Along the way he becomes involved with an exotic woman named Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), while also working with an operator named Kreutzmann (Günter Meisner) who can facilitate Stok's escape.

Suffice it to say that this is a film where virtually no one is on the up and up as to what's actually going on, and there are a number of late developments that are kind of like a series of revelatory dominoes falling one after the other. The many plot strands include assumed identities, Nazi war crimes and untold riches stolen from Jews during the Holocaust. Funeral in Berlin has a dour, almost matter of fact, ambience that helps convey its almost unavoidable Cold War subtext, but there are some really curious presentational touches along the way, including a kind of odd sequence (at least for a 1966 film) that sees Harry and a German ally named Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid) go to a club featuring a lot of performers in drag.

Funeral in Berlin Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Funeral in Berlin is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Paramount Pictures with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is an unfortunately less than optimal presentation of the film, with a source element that looks dated and pretty faded a lot of the time. The palette does pop occasionally rather nicely, especially in some outdoor material, but a lot of this presentation looks brown or even slightly peach colored at times, often without much suffusion. There's a somewhat digital appearance on display as well, and signs of sharpening can be spotted in some of the screenshots accompanying this review. Kind of weirdly, the opening credits are windowboxed, and at least some of that sequence looks anamorphically squeezed to me (see screenshot 19). Grain resolves naturally for the most part, and on the plus side there's very little noticeable age related wear and tear.

Funeral in Berlin Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Funeral in Berlin features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track that is a bit boxy sounding at times, especially with regard to some of the score by Konrad Elfers, but which delivers dialogue with perfectly capable support. Occasional sound effects like the machine guns spraying a defector's mode of egress in the film's opening sequence reverberate with sufficient force as well.

Funeral in Berlin Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no supplements of any kind on the disc.

Funeral in Berlin Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Funeral in Berlin is elaborately plotted and creates a suitably suspenseful mood, though you can feel this nascent franchise moving just a tad closer to James Bond territory at times, at least with regard to the femme fatale aspect. Video is certainly improvable but audio is generally fine for those who are considering a purchase.