Upstream - S3E19: The Quiller Memorandum

Starting point is 00:00:00 Nobody wears a brown shirt now, you see. No banners. Consequently, they're difficult to recognize. Hello and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond, I am November Kelly, I am joined, as always, by my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. A- Hello. How you doin'? N- And we have watched a good film. A- Oh, we did it! We did, we did it!

Starting point is 00:00:38 We found one! N- The novelty of this! A- We found a good film! N- At long last, in the season of Solidarity, we have seen a great film! A- A great film! N- At long last, in the season of Solidarity, we have seen a great film! A- A great film a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film!

Starting point is 00:00:46 ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film!

Starting point is 00:00:54 ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film!

Starting point is 00:01:02 ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! ALICE, you're a good film! Like, fucking podcast prospectors coming back, covered in filth and donkey shit, like, we got one! Like, all the gold nuggets! RIght. You wanna get rich in a gold rush, sell the Euro Spy. That's what I'm saying.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Yes. Yeah, that's true. This is the Quiller Memorandum. Which, I mean, I'll say this for it, he doesn't write a fucking memorandum in it. It doesn't seem to receive one either, so... He gets fucking completely owned for the entire film! Stop, yeah. Start to finish.

Starting point is 00:01:35 He gets his ass handed to him for the entire film, and then totally Deus Ex Machina's by luck at the end. This is a movie about how it would go were I an intelligence officer, right? In that he gets outwitted at every turn and then some. And it's just honestly really good, and the way you can tell it's really good to start with is the cast list, right? Because we start in Berlin, and in the opening titles you see the name Alec Guinness, and I go, fuck yes. You see the name Max von Sydow, and I say, fuck yes.

Starting point is 00:02:11 Let's go. Center Berger, fuck yes. And the screenplay, written by Harold Pinter. So- Ooh, I missed that, my god, hell yeah! We know what we're about here, like we're working with professionals. I tell you what, they got John Barry on the soundtrack as well. They got the Bond theme guy.

Starting point is 00:02:33 Yeah, and do you know who sings the theme song? No, I don't. Matt Monroe! Matt Monroe, the guy who did From Russia With Love! Oh shit! There's a little, like, Bond connections here and there. Beautiful. That's cause it's a British movie.

Starting point is 00:02:46 It is, it is. This is not a... This is European spy movie in that Britain is Europe. Yeah, it's Euro Spy in the sense that it's like, pre-Brexit, so we hadn't like, soared ourselves off from the continent yet. I don't think we're in Europe... I think we're still European. ...geographically, because, you know, we had that whole vote about it.

Starting point is 00:03:04 Anyway. Oh yeah. We have to begin, as isically, because, y'know, we had that whole vote about- anyway. Oh yeah. We have to begin, as is tradition, with a 009 scene. Correct. And this is a well done 009 scene, we're in Berlin, it's like a Berlin street, it's night, it looks inhospitable as fuck, and a guy sort of like hurries along to a phone booth, tries to make a phone call, and is shot through the glass. And you go... RIP to 009.

Starting point is 00:03:29 The man with the thinnest tie in the world, by the way. Yep. The movie always begins with an agent called 009 being killed, and then we cut to M, but in this time we have two M's, we have M and M, who are having a lovely lunch. In none other city than... Yes, indeed. They are doing what I do every day, which is eating pheasant and saying things like mew.

Starting point is 00:03:54 And just being very plummy. I love these guys. Did we get any drops of them? Because their accents are like... I actually didn't, is the thing, but you can find it in the also-Alloc Guinness original Tinker Tailor Soldier spy series, there's bits of it sprinkled about it, it's very RP in a way that even posh people don't sound like now. And they're also not in an office, they're in a gentleman's club, they're in the Garrick

Starting point is 00:04:20 or something like it. Having the worst food, the thing is, it's pheasant, right, but it looks like school food, there's like a shot of a waiter dumping a kind of like, mortar shell of mashed potatoes onto this guy's plate. FES- school food? What kind of fuckin- I know what school you went to. Like, rehydrated slices of pheasant. Pheasant fingers? I'm just saying.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Pheasant dinosaurs? These guys are great. slices of pheasant. Eugh. Pheasant fingers? I'm just saying. Pheasant dinosaurs? These guys are great. It's posh school food in the sense that the ingredients are quite expensive, but it has been both cooked and plated, like, in a very spartan way, so what you have is this, like, wholly cooked thing of pheasant, and some mashed potatoes and some peas, and that's it. Like...

Starting point is 00:05:03 Listen, this might be fine dining ingredients-wise, but I know a lunch lady was involved at some point in the process there. Yeah, and this is the thing, this is what the food in those kind of London clubs is, well, was, and to a certain extent is like, right? Because for like, people who are still kind of mentally stuck in public school, and, you know, want to eat that for the rest of their lives. And these guys are posho cunts, and we get that because they're discussing the death of the boy in the previous scene, they're like, oh, 009's been done in, tragic, tragic,

Starting point is 00:05:32 and then they just start talking about the pheasant. They just talk about, oh, it's a nice little meal. Like, they so clearly do not give half a shit about this man who has just been killed. I wrote down, they care as much about 009 as we do. Which I kind of like, you know? Like, well, it's been a 009 scene. They are as old-hand at this as we are watching these. So they're like, 009's dead.

Starting point is 00:05:53 They say, well, we better call our Bond for this movie. What's he doing? He's actually on vacation. Well, do you think Robbie could call him and get him out of it? What are you having? Is that good? He's like, it's pheasant. "- Oh, it should be good then.

Starting point is 00:06:06 It is rather good, yeah." ALICE Yeah, it's quite a sort of, like, Spartan film, because ordinarily at this point we would cut to Al Bond, who'd be, I dunno, committing some kind of sex crime, and then we'd establish him, but instead, we just cut straight to Berlin, and Al Bond, Quiller, who is American, weirdly. ALICE Yes, this is an adaptation, it's a change they made for the movie. In the books these are based on, he's British, and the agency is more obviously MI6, right, but they've just kind of glossed over that here, they've made him a bit more of an outsider

Starting point is 00:06:37 in that way. Yeah. So we go to a Berlin stadium, and our bond, Quiller, meets his man in Berlin. Not just a Berlin stadium, the Olympiastadion, which is like, you may remember it from the 1936 Olympics. And- SONIA If you're very old. ALICE Yeah, if you are a time traveller, or you

Starting point is 00:06:58 were around for the 1930s, you may remember it from the 1936 Olympics, where it was kind of a set piece of the Nazis like Olympic Games organizations. And Quiller is sort of like there, there's a tour group and there is a sinister Alec Guinness. One of my favourite genres of Alec Guinness. I'm so excited to see Alec Guinness. I'll say this about Alec Guinness, right? If you've only seen him in stuff like, you know, Star Wars, right? You might think, that guy's a really good actor, and you would be right, right, but the thing about Alek Guinness is he's a professional, right, and I think there's a sort of mark of difference when he's playing a role that he is interested

Starting point is 00:07:36 in and likes. Like I hate to say this because you can't really tell from the performance except comparatively, but like Obi-Wan Kenobi as a performance is kind of phoned in, right? It's like- Yeah. You can write this shit. The guy towards the end of his career being like, yeah, fucking space wizards, whatever, more elegant weapon for a civilized age, even something he actually likes, he's like, way better than that. And this is clearly one of those. He did famously say in his letters home that he didn't particularly enjoy playing Obi-Wan Kenobi,

Starting point is 00:08:04 and then everyone treated him as if he was a million years old. At the same time, though, the result was just a fantastic and iconic IP that I just think Star Wars is really excellent. RILEY Hey, I gotta tell ya. The original trilogy? I loved them. NARES Yeah, the next one as well.

Starting point is 00:08:20 ALICE I have a sort of digressive story about Allegheny's Obi-Wan Kenobi, that always makes me feel like indeterminate feelings, which is, he, having played the role, met a fan who had seen the film like, 11 times, and because autism hadn't been formally invented yet, he was like, okay I'll sign an autograph like you want, but you have to promise to never watch Star Wars ever again, and what Alek Genis sort of inadvertently did is enter this poor kid into a kind of neurodivergent devil's bargain. ALICE So fucked up. SONIA But then, you know, it was really weird of him to say that to me, but then I grew up and I got cast in it, so... ALICE Yeah, mmhm. But yeah, so Alec Guinness is

Starting point is 00:09:05 Hall, who is the kind of like, handler for this mission, and he's very like, very small, very like, greased down, little sort of neat mustache. The accent is interesting as well, it's kind of working class London, but like, mannered a bit, it reminds me, I'm trying to think who it reminds me of, and I can't, I couldn't quite place it, it's a, he talks a bit like Ken Livingston, if you have any sort of context for that. Yeah! It's a very good choice, cause it's either a kind of like, working class guy who is now made good and is working for MI6, or it's a posh guy who's trying to sound more working

Starting point is 00:09:43 class than he is, either one tells us something quite good about the character, and the fact that we can't tell tells us even more. ALICE Yes. And he's sort of like casually sitting there eating his, like, Bratwurst. They do the obligatory code phrase, which is sort of cigarette based. And he finally, like, you know, gets through the code phrase and tells him, right, the thing about Germany, it's full of fucking Nazis. I don't know if you're aware of this. He's like, listen, bit of a problem, Germany, it's full of fucking Nazis, I know we tried

Starting point is 00:10:17 to deal with them, but they're back, and they're worse than ever. Something inherent for German psyche, I think. It's phrased really well well too, it's like, this time they're not in any hurry, and they look like anyone, and we know that they're trying to implant themselves into the political life of West Germany, to seize power again, and we're engaged in a kind of secret war against them. Yeah. He says they look just like everybody else. Yes.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Yeah. He says that twice. Yeah, you're in a shadow war now. They have a secret base somewhere, but we don't know where it is. And as he says, it wouldn't do to underestimate them. Which is, y'know, a worthwhile moral about sort of neo-Nazis then and now. Yeah, yeah it is. You gotta take them seriously.

Starting point is 00:11:09 The thing that strikes me about this too is that it's kind of shooting fish in a barrel but filming, as they do in the next scene, a 1966 West German crowd with the heavy implication wonder how many of these guys are still Nazis. These guys could still be Nazis, you know? It's very effective, given that 20 years is not such a long time. And you're sort of looking at everyone over the age of about, like, 35, and you're going, oh hold on a second here. You're a motherfucker.

Starting point is 00:11:39 What were you doing 20 years ago, cunt. So they have a secret base somewhere, we need to find where it is, and you know, 009 was onto it, hence he got killed, hence we brought you in. And the previous guy as well, he even asked, he's like, who was the station lead in the last memo you got? And he's like, it's some guy. It's like, it's not even him, he's dead, and it's not even the next guy, he's actually also dead.

Starting point is 00:12:01 He died two days ago. Best of. Best of luck. And again, I always have a weakness for this kind of thing of being like, your assignment is extremely perilous, goodbye. I'm reminded of one of my favourite books, one of my favourite spy books, The Man Who Was Thursday, where the sort of agent handler there sort of like, introduces the mission by saying, I am sentencing you to death, good day. And also spends the entire mission, just the entire briefing scene being a little bit too arch.

Starting point is 00:12:27 ALICE Yes. RILEY Be like, I'm not full of confidence right now, but what am I gonna do? I'm gonna go and just start announcing my presence. ALICE Yeah, yeah. ALICE Yeah, this is interesting, right, because the traditional Bond structure at this point would do this but not acknowledge that it was intentional, right? Would be like, okay, Bond walks up to the guy and goes, I know you've been doing evil plans, my name is James Bond, I'm staying at the Hotel Excelsior room 402, I tend to

Starting point is 00:12:57 leave it unlocked, and I'm very vulnerable to poisons. Do you wanna come and fuck me and also poisons? That'd be a more interesting direction for a Bond movie. Yeah, yeah. But like here, what happens is, he knows he's being followed, right, as he leaves. Through like, the Kvostindam in West Berlin. Being followed by a big guy. A big guy.

Starting point is 00:13:18 The most Nazi-looking motherfucker you've ever seen. And again, they really play up to like, they cast some Nazi-looking guys in this. And this big blonde guy is following him, and we do some, not for the last time in this movie, actually pretty good counter-surveillance techniques. He ducks through a shot and hides to shake the guy off. ALICE Yeah, yeah. And then he starts following his pursuer as well, like follows him into a bar, and then just goes right up to him and he's like, yeah, what up, are you looking for me? I have a couple of things here.

Starting point is 00:13:51 First of all, this sort of chase scene is shot very sparsely, there's no music for a long time, and it doesn't explain anything. And if you compare that to the way something like the Bourne movies do this exact scene, of like, you cut to a control room of guys yelling, get me some eyeballs on the street. Exactly. It's so much more subdued than that, but it's not like, sedate for it. It's still very tense. SONIA TASTE So tense, very tense. So he goes right up to him and he's like, you know what up, and the guy uses the code phrase, he's like, hello,

Starting point is 00:14:24 I'm Hangel, I'm a friendly agent, I'm here to support you, what's the plan, boss? Like- I'm your cover, because I'm supposed to follow you around and guard you, and because the last guy didn't trust me enough to have me do that, he got got. Therefore, you are going to want to trust me." And of course Quiller does not trust him, and you have quite a tense scene with him, but he's, he like, he orders him a beer and he's like, I don't wanna drink this.

Starting point is 00:14:53 You can't make me drink this. ALICE He also insults his skin, he's just like, you have terrible skin, like, you need to do that thing people do on TikTok that makes them look like they're covered in slime. ALICE Yeah. Yeah. NICOLAS He also gets in an incredible... did you get a drop of the...?

Starting point is 00:15:09 ALICE Oh yeah, yeah, I have it. He orders a drink and then goes, QUILLUM I need to chase him. NICOLAS It's just for us. NICOLAS And so Hangul's like, hey, next location is probably gonna be bowling alley, or the swimming pool, because Devil and I like to go to both of those. ALICE And unusually, Quillum makes the swimming pool, because 009 liked to go to both of those. And unusually, Quillen makes the thing intentional, where he's like, I will go there and make

Starting point is 00:15:28 sure they know who I am, so that I can find them, or so that they can find me, which will allow me to, like, y'know, get onto their trail. The scene of the bowling alley is interesting because it's a dead end, it doesn't go anywhere. It's true, there's a couple of these. Also, I do wanna note very quickly, he, uh, in the course of the code phrase, he takes a cigarette off this guy hangover, and he smokes one second of the cigarette and stubs it out. This is the cigarette that you smoke instantly, and the cigarette that's good for you.

Starting point is 00:15:56 They invented it. We were just too blind to see. SONIA It's not really good for you so much as it's just not as bad for you as the other thing. ALICE I think having like, one second's worth of a cigarette is good for you. It's not really good for you so much as it's just not as bad for you as the other thing? I think having like one second's worth of a cigarette is good for you. It's probably fine. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but like... So we go to the bowling alley and he talks to the boss, he's like, I'm a businessman,

Starting point is 00:16:14 I'm a friend of 009's, and the boss is like, never heard of him. This boss who by the way looks like Yosef Mengele on a bad day. Like, there's some alarming hairlines and sort of like skull, jaw shapes in this movie. Like again, combined with Alec Guinness in the beginning, you just kind of end up doing West German phrenology? Where you just see a guy and you're like, this guy's a fuckin' Nazi, he looks like a Nazi to me. ALICE Well, he kind of gets profiled in the next

Starting point is 00:16:44 scene, cause he goes to the swimming pool, and he's for some reason watching the people swimming, he poses as a coach, and this guy comes up to him suspicious and asks him to leave, and I'm like, does this guy think he's gay? Is that what he's suspecting him of? I don't know. It's just, chiefly, this is a movie about how annoying it is to talk to German people, because he goes to this swimming pool and he's like, hey, I'm just watching, is that cool? And the guy goes, no, this is not allowed for you to watch here.

Starting point is 00:17:12 He goes, come on, come on. He's like, no, this is not the location for watching. This is the location for swimming. You can tell because it is called the swimming pool. You have to leave now. But then the next thing is like, okay, 009 was maybe onto elite because there's a school teacher who recently got arrested because they found out he was a massive Nazi. Yes.

Starting point is 00:17:33 And like, that's going to be confusing to the kids in his class. But like, I don't know. There's a couple of teachers that I had at school who I would have been very happy if they'd been arrested. Yeah, there's a couple of teachers at my school who were arrested. Not for war crimes, but for the other bad thing. Y'know. SONIA Yeah, my history teacher, and all the history teacher of mine did in fact get questioned by police, I think. ALICE The thing is, you mentioned where I went to

Starting point is 00:17:54 school, I think one of the chief things about where you go to school is that it's probably not good if it has like a controversies section on Wikipedia. SONIA Mmm, mhm. That pheasant was great though, I really enjoyed that. Mm, yeah yeah yeah, absolutely. Very very dense mashed potatoes though. And at this, we also see like old, old fashioned school security, because he just goes into like a school.

Starting point is 00:18:17 Yep. Just walks in. Filled with children, walks in, walks in the door, unlocked, says hello, I'm a journalist from this paper. ALICE No ID to prove this, no anything to prove this. SONIA No, no, no. I'd love to chat to one of your teachers about the Nazi teacher, I'm writing a report on, like, Nazis. And so he ends up, well, first of all, he speaks to, like, the headmistress? ALICE The headmistress, yeah, the headmistress, who is, like, also fairly sinister looking, and is like, oh, I don't speak English, you'll have to, like, also fairly sinister looking, and is like, oh,

Starting point is 00:18:45 I don't speak English, you'll have to, like, speak to one of our teachers who does. Please follow me. And she takes him to meet... Miss Smokeshow? Yes. Miss Ten Out Of Ten, Ten Out Of Ten, Smokeshow, Miss Lint, Inge. The Lint Master Chocolatier? The Lint Mistress Inger. Mm-hmm. The Lint master chocolatier? The Lint mistress chocolatier here. Oh, excuse me?

Starting point is 00:19:09 Getting my shit whisked by the Lint mistress chocolatier. Whisked by the Lint mistress chocolatier? Ahhhh. Ahhhh. Dev dropping out just leads us into these situations. Yeah, this is- SONIA If you'll listen, the dev dropped out like ten minutes ago because their internet clapped out and they're still trying to restart it,

Starting point is 00:19:30 so now we're just getting into the lint mistress chocolate here. ALICE Yes. Yeah. And this is Center Verga, who you may remember from The Spy With My Face, and like, a bunch of other things we've watched. SONIA Wait, she was in Spy With My Face? I thought she seemed kind of familiar. Yeah, she was in Spy with My Face, she was in Shots in Three Quarter Time, she was in... Was she?

Starting point is 00:19:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's been in a bunch of these. Wow. She had this whole, sort of like, Euro Spy career. Yeah, she's great in this too, I really like her. Yeah, I mean, the one thing I dislike about this, right, is that they want you to understand that this beautiful woman is beautiful, right, and I had a I dislike about this, right, is that they want you to understand that this beautiful woman is beautiful, right? And I had a few clues for this, like, mostly looking at her, also she's wearing a very tight dress and that kind of 1940s bullet bra lingerie, so I'm like, yeah, my eyeballs

Starting point is 00:20:17 are bulging out, I'm like, floating towards the high cooling on the windowsill, but- Putting myself on the head with a frying pan. Exactly, exactly. But the movie doesn't trust me to do that, and so instead, every time she's on screen they just smear a bunch of Vaseline on the lens. LILIANA Yeah, they do, they do! They do the old Vaseline on the lens trick, and I've gotta say, I've always wondered what that was about, but having seen this film I was like, wow, that actually works.

Starting point is 00:20:40 ALICE It really does soften things. I mean, I swear to God there is a scene later on where she's like hugging Quilla and one of her teeth sparkles, so that's kind of how we're filming her. It does work when you hold on her close-ups for a long time, but when you're cutting from close-up to close-up from Quilla to her, it looks kind of weird because all of her shots are vaseline and none of his are, and the impression I'm getting from it is just like, either there's something wrong with my eyes, or Quiller looks like shit. ALICE Quiller looks like shit, and like, her half of

Starting point is 00:21:11 the room has like a kind of heat haze situation. NICOLAS But anyway, he goes up to her and he's like, yo, what up, I'm a reporter from nowhere. ALICE Well, not just a reporter from nowhere, he claims to be a reporter from Philadelphia, and what he does is inadvertently the plot of The French Dispatch, where he's like, yeah, we actually think that Philadelphians care a lot about what happens in Europe, so we're just doing a European newspaper that goes to Philadelphia.

Starting point is 00:21:35 On that basis, I'm doing an article about neo-Nazis. Have you heard of these guys? Area German woman? And she's like, maybe? I guess? It's kind of an- Yeah! It's nice, cause like, obviously they're trying to make us- well, is she with them or is she not? So she says, well we were all very surprised when, you know, Hech Steiner turned out to be an evil Nazi, like, he was a good teacher, he was very dedicated, and-

Starting point is 00:21:57 he says, so what's the new Germany all about? Like, what do you think of it? And she gives these very kind of like, pre-fab answers answers where she's like, well, we're teaching the children a broader attitude, and it's like, maybe you mean this and you're being cautious because you don't know this man, or maybe you're being cautious because you're a NAZI! ALICE Yeah, do you remember the bit in the Sum of All Fears where the guy is, the evil neo-Nazi guy is talking about European integration and stuff, and it zooms in on his watch, and the back of it has a big swastika engraved in it.

Starting point is 00:22:26 That's kind of the thought process that I'm going through with this woman, where I'm like, I'm gonna need to see the back of your watch right now, lady. ALICE I'm just, I'm running the Hitler particle detector and it's clicking, cause there's someone in here, but I can't get a lock on it. ALICE Well, the thing is, you're in West Germany in the 60s, there's a high background level of Hitler particles, like ambient Hitler is quite high, and it requires quite a fine-grained detector to work out whether an individual West German is emitting the Hitler particles

Starting point is 00:22:58 or not. SONIA Yeah. And then he kind of behaves, well, like a bit of a creep, but in a way that I believe that a spy would? ALICE Yeah. SONIA Because he invites himself back to her place, gives her a lift in his convertible, helps her carry her bag upstairs. ALICE Beautiful Porsche 356, by the way.

Starting point is 00:23:15 SONIA And they have this chat that's like, kind of him chatting her up, but also kind of an interrogation. He's subtle, but he pushes her a lot. And it's like, what kind of men do you know? Do you know any Nazis? Like, what do you think? Are you a Nazi? Would you ever be- oh, not that I think there's anything wrong with that, of course, but you know, maybe you are.

Starting point is 00:23:36 ALICE He kind of plays himbo, he's like, I'm a sports writer, and then, you know, I don't know anything about politics. And then the way that he provokes her a little bit to like, test things, is he insults the German boxer Max Schmeling, and talks about Joe Lewis having like, laid him out in the ring. And he just kind of generally like, is a kind of ugly American. And she like, takes this all in stride, she's like, oh no, I don't know anything about boxing, and you're like, yeah, but do you though?

Starting point is 00:24:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, at one point he even says, you know, there's a lot of people who think that Germany needed to be strong, you gotta make the strong nation, the dominant nation. I have a drop, in fact. I wouldn't say dominant, I mean, we don't wanna dominate anyone. Because he's comparing it to the US, like, pretty often. He's like, yeah, I mean, listen, obviously I'm an American, I want America to be strong, I don't think it's wrong for like, Germans to want Germany to be strong.

Starting point is 00:24:33 And it's like, seductive and investigatory, it's like... SONIA It's the old interview technique of like, well, when the rain blows and, when the rain pours and the wind blows, the man buttons up his coat, but when the sun shines and the clouds go away, the man takes his coat off himself. Like he's like trying to set her up and be like, hey, you know, if you were a Nazi or you knew any Nazis, that'd be cool with me. And I'm definitely not a spy. Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:25:00 And she's like, well, you know, there's some Nazis in Germany, but they don't call themselves that anymore. And like, but you know, and she doesn't really give him anything. And he's like, well, you know, there's some Nazis in Germany, but they don't call themselves that anymore, and like... But, you know, and she doesn't really give him anything, and he's like, cool, do you wanna go on a date? Yeah. And she's like, well, maybe. Like, I'm around all the time. You can just, if you wanna find me, just walk into this school full of children unsupervised,

Starting point is 00:25:22 and just find me, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a really nice, it's nice to see this thing, cause he's clearly very children unsupervised and just find me, I guess. Yeah. So- Yeah, yeah, it's a really nice, it's nice to see this thing, because he's clearly very good at being a spy. And it's like, it's nice to see someone who's good at being a spy, but not in a way that's like they could turn into a stuntman from a long way away. Yeah, genuinely.

Starting point is 00:25:39 Do you know what I mean? Like, as much fun as it is to watch James Bond do his thing, this guy has a different thing, and it's good to watch him do it. ALICE He's more detective than spy, and I think there's a lot of overlap there, right? I think a lot of spy movies sort of require their spies to kind of like play detective for a bit, and often it doesn't come off, whereas here I think it really does, because it's mostly about off, whereas here I think it really does, because it's mostly about that, y'know? Like, there's comparatively little violence in this movie, we'll sort

Starting point is 00:26:11 of get to that. I mean, even the kind of, like, thriller stuff, like, it's mostly like foot chases and stuff like that. And I think in this case it works really well. So, he's about to leave, we see the other side of his car which is like insanely dirty, and I just write down, apropos of nothing I don't give a fuck if you're a secret agent, wash your damn car. So he has this altercation in the street with these guys who come up to him, and the subtitles at this point crapped out, which is why I need your German, like what happened to you? Yeah, it's just the one guy at first actually, but he sees a guy who looks like kind of 70s West German Virgil Texas, right?

Starting point is 00:26:50 And he's like, I think that motherfucker's following me. So he turns around, stops him, he's looking at an advertising hoarding, and says, hey, are you following me? And the guy's like, no, no, no, I'm not following you. And so he kind of threatens him a bit, he kind of pushes him, and what he does by doing this is force the rest of the surveillance team out of the bushes, essentially. Because then one other guy shows up and is like, hey is this guy bothering you, Queen? And then a second guy shows up and is like, hey is this guy bothering you, Queen? And there's three guys like like, very obviously together, being like, why are you messing

Starting point is 00:27:27 with my friend Mr. Normal Man? And he's just like, oh yeah, no worries, I guess I'll just leave then. One of them is standing in front of me and is like, you're in my way. Like moves him out of the way, and leaves. So he is aware now that his provocations, like, you know, poking at this bowling alley guy and the swimming baths guy, have led to him actively being followed by Nazis. And he knows who they are.

Starting point is 00:27:53 And he also speaks flawless German, which he said he didn't. So that's a nice little reveal too. And this provocation does not go unanswered though, because later on somebody bumps into him just in the street, just idly, and we see that he's being watched and stuff. Then he gets in his car and he goes driving and like he's being followed. Yeah, Hengla's following him. As he's supposed to, we are told, right, because he's his bodyguard, and as they're driving on the Autobahn. And they're really driving too, it's not like a screen like James Bond, like,

Starting point is 00:28:25 and he's in front of a big projector, like, they're really driving too, it's not like a screen like James Bond like, da da da da da da, and he's sitting in front of a big projector like, they're really driving! Those greens! And it's tense, it is silent, and the driving is like getting increasingly fast as well. And again we see some good counter surveillance in Bracket's car this time, where he like cuts across a slip road to like, get off the highway and he just like, he dodges Hangel, who is just like, left looking after him as they separate. ALICE And then he pulls up to some red lights, I fucking love this.

Starting point is 00:28:59 I love this reveal. He pulls up to some red lights, and he starts feeling faint and the camera goes all blurry, and he collapses over. ALICE Low blood sugar. NICOLA Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gotta have a Snickers. And then the guys in the car next to him, one of them gets out, pushes him into the passenger seat, and drives away, and it's like, oh fuck, the guy who bumped into him in the street must have injected him with something.

Starting point is 00:29:23 ALICE Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love this, because you don't see a dart or something like that, he doesn't even react to it at the time, other than the guy bumps into him and goes like, ow, and it's in passing, right? It's really really good, and I think a movie with less confidence in itself would have gone with a little reaction shot of him pulling a dart out or something, but it leaves you to piece it together. S Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or would've had a flashback to the bumping, or even would've shown us explicitly that the guy bumped into him and had a little needle in his hand or something.

Starting point is 00:29:52 M To Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so he suffers from acute low blood sugar and gets bundled into this car, and he wakes up in predictably- S The best scene of the film. M The Nazi torture basement. You know, sort of, me getting the shit kicked out of me in a Nazi torture basement, you're not you when you're hungry, have a Snickers. It's a lovely torture basement though, it's gorgeous. Very eclectic, and the reason why is because they filmed this largely in Berlin, right? And Berlin, even in 1966, was still so bombed that you had to stitch this together with

Starting point is 00:30:24 stage sets, right? So this has been made, and so what you have is this sort of 19th century villa room that's been interposed with a bunch of different architectural styles, and I will say this, the boys, these various Nazis, who we have seen earlier, like, following him around, are both stanced up around the room, sort of haphazardly, and also, they're getting fits off, I hate to say it, like, this is the menswear rye, like, they're- Yeah, you do occasionally have to hand it to them, like, so, we finally meet Max von Sitter, whose name is October.

Starting point is 00:31:01 Oh, I have the drop, yeah, He like wakes him up and he goes, My name's October. Imagine being named after a month. Yeah, very good thing that you didn't choose that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Max von Sydow is... The hunt for brown shirt October. Yeah, clearly like the boss Nazi.

Starting point is 00:31:20 Mm-hmm. Yeah, cause you can tell, cause he's wearing a green velvet smoking jacket and has bleached hair that's been slicked down. You know what else is a line I have as a drop that Max von Sydell says? What? HEROIN! YAY! Which is entirely germane, because this guy, October, his deal is, he is the drugs Nazi.

Starting point is 00:31:40 And to be fair, a lot of Nazis were the drugs Nazi, right? Like, if you're in the secret Nazi torture basement and they offer you chocolate, do not take it. But he says, hello, I'm Esbern of the Greybornes, and I'm gonna teach you how to use your Thum, but first of all, why don't you tell us your real name? This is a great fucking scene. I fucking love this, it's so good. He uses the Gerry Adams technique of simply just being like, you got the wrong guy, I'm

Starting point is 00:32:08 like Joe Fucksick, like you got the wrong guy, I'm a book dealer, like, it's just mistaken identity, what do you want to do? Yeah, he wastes so much of their time, and you can see Max instead of trying not to get frustrated with him. Being interrogated, right, is God's perfect occasion to do bits. Like you are set up for it so badly because there is someone who has to ask you questions with a straight face, and you can just be like, yeah, my name is fuckin' Joe McGwigan. Prove I'm not.

Starting point is 00:32:35 But yeah, he says you got the wrong guy mistakenly, he keeps bullshitting them and he's like, come on, what's your real name? He's like, I'm John Fuckstick the Third, like, you got no... And then he goes, he goes like, come on Mr. Quiller, tell us your real name. ALICE Yeah, that's a beautiful line, what's your real name Mr. Quiller. And it's the sort of technique that Oktober is using here is kind of patient and insistent and amused, and he's sort of like indulging him. However, Quilla has another thing up his sleeve, and do we recall the solo principle?

Starting point is 00:33:12 Yes. Always be escaping. Always be escaping. Eventually they will let their guard down, like after the like hundredth time you try to escape. Well, he tries it the first time, it doesn't work, and then he immediately tries it again and it does. The quickest return of the solo principle. Well, kind of, kind of, yeah, because he tries to run for it, he gets beat, and then they inject him. With the, um...

Starting point is 00:33:36 Heroin! Well, they inject him with something, and he makes him... I assume. Very docile. Oh, it's like a truth serum, it's like sodium pentasol or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, predictably there is a Nazi doctor there, you know, sort of likely ideology for it. Mm-hmm. To like inject him, I do appreciate that every time he injects him he gives him the little

Starting point is 00:33:57 like swab first. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, well, we wouldn't want you to get hurt. Yeah. And so... But he's so fucking out of it, that he can't tell them- he says Inga, which is the name of the teacher, and Mark's one-sided is like, come on, your boss's name isn't Inga, like, who's your boss, where's your base, what are you with?

Starting point is 00:34:14 Where's your base? Where's your base? Where's your base? ALICE More insistent, but still kind of like, it's coaxing. He's not like, slapping him around or anything, he's like, at a few points he tries to trick him essentially, and he's like, hey we need to get a hold of your boss so we can help you, what number do we call, you should report to your boss right now, let us help you do

Starting point is 00:34:38 that. Yeah. Is this great, or is this like, aw that boss of yours, it works too hard, what's his name again? What's his fucking name? What's his name? KM Yeah, yeah, yeah. ALICE And, like, you see Quill having to, like, bite back answers, right? Like he's like, so nearly, like, almost says a name that he shouldn't.

Starting point is 00:34:54 KM He says Paul at one point, but then, like, says like, Paul, Paulie wanna crack out, and like, he rolls it into this bullshit, this scene is honestly, listen, it's so fucking good, like, the dialogue in this, so well written and there's so many little blind allies and it's so tense as Max Wonsidu is slowly seeking out Spider, crawling towards the right information. ALICE Yeah, he does kind of do a bit of sissy hypno on him as well. NICCO He does, he does. ALICE Because Quela's other technique to, and the reason

Starting point is 00:35:22 why he says Inga, right, is that there's a painting, or like, it might be a fresco, across the thing of like, a nude woman, and he sees this and he gets too horny to get interrogated, effectively? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, this is a technique I've done before. But then Max von Sitter was just like, oh, that girl, Inga, you like her? She's pretty, your boss is fucking her right now, what's your boss's name again? We should go get him for you, like. And then he even tries to be like, Quiller, you've been captured, like, you like her, she's pretty, your boss is fucking her right now, what's your boss's name again, we should go get him for you, like, and then he even tries to be like, you're

Starting point is 00:35:46 quite cool, you've been captured, like, we just found you, you know, you need to report, tell us the number of the person you answered to, and like, it's so fucking relentless, it goes on for like 15, 20 minutes, it's honestly incredible. My notes say, do you imagine yourself as a woman when you masturbate? Oh, I mean, I have a drop, not from this, but from later on. We're very interested in the feminine point of view. So. But yeah, it does have a little bit of the forced feminization to it by the end, especially

Starting point is 00:36:12 when they're both looking at this fresco and being like, yeah, she's got really long legs, does she? Tell me more about it. You can go back to her if you tell me what your boss's name is. And yeah, it's sort of very suggestive, very collaborative, and of course eventually he like passes out from too much heroin. And Max once said, I was like, fucking, I have never met a problem I cannot solve by injecting pharmaceuticals into, like, captive, hit him up with the amphetamine, you know? Yeah, well they say, they say, kill him and dump his body, basically.

Starting point is 00:36:45 Yeah, yeah. That's what the scene ends. But they don't, interestingly. Yeah, they leave him alive, like, by the spray, by the river. He's, like, his suit is soaked, he's lost his shoes, and he sort of stumbles to a taxi, and you know, asks the guy to take him back to his shitty little hotel, so presumably he can get started on writing that memorandum. And again, paranoia.

Starting point is 00:37:16 Yes I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough? Because he is, of course, being followed, the Nazis are like, waiting for him, and we don't actually know whether the cab driver's like, in on it, but it's like, heavily implied that he is. And so he sort of like, waits for him to get out of the cab to like, hand him back over to the Nazis, and like, steals the cab, and we get a car chase. Yeah, and like, he causes his pursuers to crash, but like, I don't know, it's an interesting question, like, is the taxi driver really on it? Is he not?

Starting point is 00:37:47 Like, we don't know, we don't know what the fuck's going on. He eventually makes it to a hotel, and he gets a room, and he calls Miss Smokeshow. Yes, at like one in the morning. And is like, hey, I miss you, can I come and see you? Which is like, probably not now, but like, tomorrow I guess. Maybe tomorrow, I should say. Maybe after school. So then, he like, gets a new hire car. His suit is still like, extremely fucked up after this, which I always like. I'm always weak to like, you have like, fucked up a guy's

Starting point is 00:38:18 outfit over the course of a movie. And a guy, like, a rather sort of effete, sort of Quentin Crisp type guy. A very old man. Yeah. A gay old man gets in the car with him, and is like, here's your code phrase, you gotta come with me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's actually a really good bit, because the code phrase is entirely cigarette based, and he like has to offer him a cigarette, and at the end he like offers it him back, and the guy's like,

Starting point is 00:38:45 I don't smoke. You have to go and see Paul. SONIA Yeah, he says, your car was found abandoned, every one of the agencies thinks you're a dipshit, go and see Alec Guinness. ALICE Yes. And he tells Alec Guinness what happened. And Alec Guinness is so blasé about this, we have a fantastic line where Quill says, he ordered them to kill me.

Starting point is 00:39:03 He goes, and did they? And Paul sort of like explains, you're being outwitted at every fucking turn here, and the stakes are these. I'm gonna explain using these two muffins. This muffin are the Neo-Nazis, and this muffin is MI6, and you are this little cunty sultana that I've placed in the middle, and you have to be in the middle of this, in this gap between them, giving us information without exposing our position.

Starting point is 00:39:31 You cannot expose the position of our mother. This movie is very focused on bases, and the location of bases, and yeah, that's sort of the preoccupation, I guess. ALICE Yeah, very base-based movie. ALICE Yes. I actually find it quite cringe. But Quill is like, cool, cool, great, thanks for all the encouragement, Alec Guinness. Meanwhile, you gotta go on a date with Ms. Smokeshow. Yeah, you have to go on a date with this insanely hot woman. And...

Starting point is 00:39:56 A slightly unusual technique here, which is like, he touches her hair and holds her without being asked. He also has this line. Did you get the line? Which line? Oh yeah, I think I might do. Is it the one where he goes, You're so white. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you're so white. So white.

Starting point is 00:40:16 Oh my god, clearly. You can't just be telling people that they're white. Careful white. Yeah, careful white. Fortunately, she is into into this she kisses him back and she's like yeah i have been waiting for you i do i do want to shag you actually so yeah cool um hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey Oh, god, yeah. Will had just shagged Ms. Smokeshow, the teacher. And then, then I think he is awarded, for the first time we've awarded it to anyone in a while, the Brian Cox Memorial Award for Studies and Intelligence, because he kind of drops the facade of it, and he goes, yeah, I'm investigating neo-Nazis. You know, that I'm not actually a sports writer, I am a spy.

Starting point is 00:41:06 And she goes, oh that's crazy, do you carry a gun? And he's like, no, because I would, like, get more gunfights if I did, which I don't wanna do. I kinda like this, if you don't carry a gun you're less likely to get yourself killed, he says. But yeah, so she says, well, you know, my dad had a friend who knew the Nazis, cause he was part of them for a while, so I might be able to put you in touch with somebody who knows them? So they go to an abandoned swimming pool, which is always a great location, cause it's

Starting point is 00:41:37 always super spooky, and the pool guy from earlier on is there, and he's like, ah, hello. And it's, again, very tense, very kind of, like, fearful scene. Like they make out a bit while they're waiting for the guy, but then the guy shows up and it's... you can kind of tell, maybe, that Quiller is being given the run around here, because this guy is like, oh, I got out of the Nazis pretty early when I realized that Nazism is bad. Yeah, I found out about this. I read a book, and got woke. Yeah, I read 800 pages of like, Marxist feminist theory, and I decided that, um, it's not the

Starting point is 00:42:16 source of video I saw, actually. You'd de-ranicalize a transgender YouTuber. It happens. Yeah. I don't know, but like, I know a guy who maybe knows, so we're now at like three removes of guy here. NICOLA And the guy that this guy knows is a girl. ALICE Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:36 NICOLA Because... ALICE Hey. NICOLA I'm always saying this, it's the school teacher from before, the headmistress was like, ah hello! ALICE I have a question at this point, which is, is Hangul still driving around looking for Quillen? We just leave him, he's not in the rest of the movie for a long time.

Starting point is 00:42:49 I believe so. He's just fucking around like, where the fuck has my guy gone? You fucked up bodyguarding worse than anyone ever has. He's so mad, he's like walking around hitting himself in the forehead with a fist, fuck, no! He's like worse at bodyguarding than Gerard Butler in the like, Olympus Has Fallen movies. Like, okay, the guy doesn't die, but like, it's fucked up that that much shit is happening.

Starting point is 00:43:14 GERARD And we'll get to those. We'll get to those. ALICE God will we. Ugh. So anyway, the schoolteacher and this pool guy are like, yo, we're the good Germans, we wanna help you out. We're Antifa, and we've been in the hashtag resistance. Yeah, a Vervoq, actually.

Starting point is 00:43:30 The base everyone's wanted to find? It's that house over there. Good luck. A dilapidated house. Yeah, best of luck. And then we have a little kind of contretemps, I guess, between them. What?! Of a fucking house.

Starting point is 00:43:43 Yeah, alright. Then we have a small argument. Okay. Just accidentally giving you fucking PCSD. We have a small faff about like- Oh, it's a bit of a to do. Yeah, a to do. Okay. Alright, sorry.

Starting point is 00:44:01 We have a set to, about who is leaving, who's staying, and who's going into the thing, because clearly, none of these motherfuckers want to be there. Yeah, the school teacher woman is like, it is in there, by the way, I'm leaving now, right the fuck now, I have nothing more to say, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. This is always the good sign, right, when it happens. And you know, but it's plausible, you know, now it's just very frightening. And so, Miss Lint is like, fine, I'll stay behind. And so, he leaves her in the car with a phone number, and is like, if I don't come back

Starting point is 00:44:36 in 20 minutes, call this number, tell them you need cigarettes, and they'll like, come to my rescue. Yeah, and this is like back in the 60s, so the number is like 55. Yeah, the dial is like back in the 60s, so the number is like, 55. Yeah, dial one. It's like six numbers long and I'm like, what the fuck? So he infiltrates the building. Actually, she says, I love you first.

Starting point is 00:44:57 She does, she swings and I'm like- He just leaves. He looks at her like, okay, ice cold, and we've shagged once, obviously. Bit early. This is the second date. And as he sort of like, enters the building, surprise, the fucking menswear rye guys are there. Dev, you missed a bit. Immediately captured.

Starting point is 00:45:18 You missed a bit earlier, where I said about this about them in the first interrogation scene, but this is true of every subsequent scene. There's like five of these guys, they are always A. Stanced up, B. Getting a fit off, and C. Arranged haphazardly around the room. Fully. Yes, they're walking into that room and they are seeing where everyone is and just leaning up against wherever there's space. No one wants to sit down, nobody respects the humble seat.

Starting point is 00:45:41 No. Also, one of these goons pure spits Elon Musk. Well, the one that spits Virgil Texas, the one with the country little turtleneck, is like, alright fine, you're coming with us. These guys are credited, by the way, and they're credited in, like, some of the funniest IMDB things I've ever read. RILEY Yeah, deranged kraut. Demented kraut.

Starting point is 00:46:04 ALICE Demented kraut. Demented? Not exactly. These are creditors as October's Man brackets brown trousers, October's Man brackets tall blonde, and October's Man brackets pipe. And the guy playing October's Man brackets pipe is called Herbert Fux. Just in case. Nice. Nice.

Starting point is 00:46:24 Yes. Herbert Fux! Tall blonde in case. Nice. Nice. Yes. Herbert Fuxx! I sure hope he does! It's very hard nowadays they're not wearing brown shirts. Out with this guy. He's wearing brown trousers though. When it was immediately captured, Tober is practicing his golf swing in the basement? Cunty as fuck.

Starting point is 00:46:40 Cunty. Yeah, it's really funny that, like, when he comes back in they have essentially the same interaction as Liz Truss meeting King Chels. Where he's like, well well, back again, dear oh dear. NICCO And Quill looks so upset at having been captured again and finding himself in the same room, he's just like, oh, for fuck's sake, they're gonna inject me with the shit again. ALICE Yeah, he's now reaching the 7 out of 10 for the punished Quiller spectrum. Because he's been getting the shit kicked out of him, both rhetorically and literally,

Starting point is 00:47:15 since the start of this movie, and at this point it's really starting to flag him. He's not giving any... ALICE Rather than interrogate him again, Ok October just goes, hey, we captured this girl around the side of the thing. What's up. It seems like you two are connected a bit. And he tries to play it off as being like, never seen her before in my life, doesn't mean anything to me, killer.

Starting point is 00:47:38 And obviously this does not work, and October kind of laughs it off and is like, listen, can I give you until dawn? You can leave, like you can just fuck off outside, right, by all means, but if you come back and tell us where your base is, you can leave, she can leave, deal of the fucking century, if you don't I'll kill you. Yeah, he also says we are moving our base tomorrow morning, so you can't go and tell anyone anything that isn't like, you know, isn't, we're fine with. Also, all throughout this scene, Oktober has very squeaky patterned leather shoes. He does. As they're walking down the stairs to the basement, like so much of the suspense in

Starting point is 00:48:16 this movie is just like the sound of someone's leather shoes stepping on concrete. Yes. So fucking effective, I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a huge part of the opening, the one I see. He also asks him, what's it like being so sexually attractive, Quiller? Oh, I have the drop, in fact. What's it like to be so sexually attractive, Quiller?

Starting point is 00:48:34 It's like one of these people who keeps messaging me that on Tumblr and then getting mad. I need to chase her. So he leaves, right, and this fucking scene! This fucking scene. So he's walking through West Berlin, it's the middle of the night, it's deserted, there's not even cars going past. And quite literally, the Nazis have guys on every corner, like, everywhere he goes there is another guy in a cunty little menswear fit, being like, no you don't.

Starting point is 00:49:11 He tries to pick up the phone somewhere. He walks, and we get this, we feel he's walking down the same street as 009, to the same phone booth, and he tries to use the phone booth, and the Nazi guy comes up behind him and is just like, nope. ALICE They don't even talk! And this captures a real kind of, particularly, I think neo-Nazi kind of menace, where it's like, I don't even need to threaten you, kind of thing. They do this a few times, because he keeps trying to get to a phone, he tries to escape.

Starting point is 00:49:40 ZACH The thing is, we know from an earlier scene, like the first one with the two blokes talking about the pheasant, that both the previous agents were killed in the same way, shot in the back with the thing, and when Quiller leaves and he's walking down the same street, that leads you to believe that they've done this shit three times. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But my boy is getting done in, yet again.

Starting point is 00:50:05 ALICE He tries to escape with, again, some good counter-survivalence, trying to duck into a train station, and throw them off the scent, and it doesn't work! He comes back out there just waiting for him, completely blasé, because there's more of them. ZACH They all rush into a car and are like, fuck you, I know where you're going, come on, drive ahead of a train and arrange themselves casually. ALICE This is really good, like, this is up there for me with The Long Good Friday for kidnapping movies.

Starting point is 00:50:31 Even though he hasn't been formally kidnapped, he's just kind of being escorted by these guys. SONIA And he also knows that if he goes back he can save her life, but the alternative option is he just lets her die. And he actually makes it back to his hotel around about dawn. It's a really funny bit where he goes and he sees that the phone in the corridor next to his room has been ripped entirely off the wall. And at this point I write down, stop outplaying this man, I feel sorry for him.

Starting point is 00:51:04 Every fucking turn, man. His room has been ransacked? They are like several steps, they are several squeaky steps ahead of him. Once they've done this shit twice already, like, this guy is just walking down a fucking railroad, like, got his ass. So fucking bad at this. There's guys waiting outside his hotel and he realizes, right, I can sneak out the back and my car is in the hotel garage.

Starting point is 00:51:24 So he does, he shimmies down and it gets into the garage of the car, and he's about to start the engine on his car, and then he's like, wait a second. And he checks underneath the car, and they've fitted a fucking bomb on it! OOOH! They've got this boy's ass! My 26 step plan to kill this guy. Yeah! They have covered every base, like. As a series of bits! Like he's just doing, like Max Fonsino is doing tricks at this, he's doing trick shots.

Starting point is 00:51:54 Like, I'm gonna like, force him unwittingly back to the hotel where he's gonna escape and take his car, which is then gonna explode. These guys are a more menacing presence than I think Spectre ever was. Because instead of doing shit like judging people with piranha tanks, it's just like, the fact that our hero keeps trying shit that you would try in that situation and finds they've already thought of it, it's just so fucking sinister. And like, they've not really got any sort of big evil plan that we're aware of, it's

Starting point is 00:52:22 not like there's a ticking clock where they're gonna take over the government like in, you know, at the meeting next week. There's no like doomsday laser. It's just like six dudes who've thought of everything. Yeah. Like I had a facetious note like a little bit ago, but I didn't get to get to, because I was in the nightmare dimension for a while. Whereas like he got, this guy got referred to, Mr. October got referred to as like the Reichsführer, and I wrote down like, you can't be the fucking Reichsführer if there's like eight of you. It's a big fucking title to give yourself when you've got together with like seven like-minded homies in like the community center.

Starting point is 00:52:58 Yeah, and I mean, this is basically like, they're basically a street gang. I will say, fuck it, he deserves it, man. He's been thinking about this. He's really headed this boy off at every conceivable pass. It's true. And so, obviously, the thing to do when presented with a car bomb, is to detach it from the car, thus creating a sort of philosophical quandary of whether it's still a car bomb, and then detonate it deliberately, and for a second he doesn't even run away, and so I'm like,

Starting point is 00:53:30 he's just like, oh excellent, my charred corpse will serve as a distraction so I can get away. RILEY You gotta leave the environment though, Manny. ALICE Yeah, he tries to leave the environment, and there's a sort of scare where the door isn't giving way, but he eventually escapes the environment, the thing blows up, he has successfully faked his death, in time to get to the Europa Center. Which is like this... It's at this point the tallest building in Berlin, it's got a big honking Mercedes-Benz

Starting point is 00:53:59 spinning trefoil on the top, still being built, and it's like, this is the new Germany, man. ALICE Oh. ALICE And in an unfinished floor of the building that's gonna be like, the new Germany, is like, the team, like, Hengel, the weird Quentin Crisp guy, and they're all on, like, camp beds on the floor, just like, where the fuck have you been? SONIA Yeah. He comes in looking like absolute shit. ALICE He's been blown up a bit. Like he's got like...

Starting point is 00:54:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Covered in dust, just like... Dour ass. Also, he feels really bad because like, he left Inge to die. Like, he had to. At which point Alec Guinness appears having just gotten out of bed, like in his dressing gown. In his gym jams.

Starting point is 00:54:40 He's like, hello, how's it going? I'm Alec Guinness. Yeah, Quilla rolls up with like, face like a slapped ass, whereas Alec Guinness has just woken up and looks like so cozy. He's like peeling his Korean skincare mask off, like he looks fantastic. Again, like, one of the things that I value about like, a lot of British spy movies that aren't James Bond movies, is that they have a sort of class consciousness. We'll get to the Ipkris file, and when we do that we'll talk about very little else, I suspect, but there is a very clear kind

Starting point is 00:55:09 of like, if you will, junior-senior divide, and in this case, like, Paul's kind of like a middle manager, he's like a junior officer, because the seniors, as we see, are at the opera right now, they're like being like, ah, if you've gotten an invitation to this garden party... They don't care! Lord Mayor's Banquet! Lord Mayor's Banquet! Beef Wellington? Yeah, and Paul is like getting breakfast, and Quiller, who has just had the shit kicked out of him like six different ways, and is

Starting point is 00:55:37 shaking off a bad case of... HEROID! Is like, I literally don't care, just, like, here is their location, please. They're at 123 Nazi Street. Yeah. Go now. Yeah, they literally don't care, just, like, here is their location, please. They're at 123 Nazi Street. Yeah. Go now. Yeah, they're leaving tomorrow morning, just getting their fuckin' now deal with the situation. Which they do, off screen. Yes!

Starting point is 00:55:54 Interesting choice! What a choice! But like, the thing that Quiller does to outsmart these guys is one thing. He just fakes his own death with a car bomb. That's like the one thing that he does in the entire movie that they hadn't predicted that he would do, and it's what gets him the W in the end. Nice. ALICE And I like that they're all arrested off screen.

Starting point is 00:56:20 They call it in and Hengel is like, yeah, no, they got all of them, they got Oktober. No sign of a woman, though, so I don't know what that was about. ALICE Yeah, Quill had double checks, he's like pissed off, he's upset, and they're like, no mention of a girl, didn't say anything. ALICE I do like that he doesn't get any like, glory out of this, he doesn't get to see anything satisfying happen, it's just like, you are now in an office where a guy is making phone calls about it, because of you. And you kind of, you get this sort of question for him of like, are all of these arrested Nazis like, worth her life? Right? But...

Starting point is 00:56:50 And there's this fucking amazing ending scene where he goes to the school, and Inge is there. And he's like, how are you here? And she says, I'm very lucky, they just let me go. ALICE And of course, he is too smart for that, and so are we. And we have this kind of crossing swords conversation, where it becomes increasingly clear and unsettled that, like, she's on the fucking team. Like, if anything, she's 100% on the team. Yes, I believe so, yeah. Really? I don't know! She is, the whole board at the school is, the swim team guy, everyone here's a fucking

Starting point is 00:57:32 Nazi. Every German is a Nazi, is the sort of, like, arc of this, yeah. That's like my last note, actually. The way that he's kind of entrapped her about this is, she goes, oh, that number you gave me, I tried calling it and it didn't work, I don't know what's up with that, and he's like, didn't it, that's funny. He's like, she's so clearly been trying to fucking trace that number, and he's like, given it to her as a trap, because he's, like, suspected her from the start, and the thing is, what comes of

Starting point is 00:58:08 this is like, nothing. You'd kind of expect from a modern movie that he leaves the classroom and a bunch of cops go in and arrest her, right? Or she gets killed, or something. He just leaves. They have this conversation where he's like, damn, seems like West Germany's absolutely riddled with Nazis, and she's like, that would be crazy. Yeah, wouldn't that be insane? She says, you got them all, and he goes, perhaps. Perhaps. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:58:35 And then he leaves, sort of walks, runs into the headmistress and scares her. She's like, oh Jesus Christ, she clearly did not think that he was still alive. Nazi, Nazi, fucking... One million percent Nazi. Look at you. And as the German, the little German kids are being lined up and are marched across the playgrounds, he just fucking leaves. He walks out and he's like...

Starting point is 00:59:03 Every German is a Nazi. It's too hard to deal with. The new Berlin is going to be the same as the old one. Whoops. The last thing we see these fucking, these teachers do. Teachers is like bring in these kids into the classroom, the next generation of German students. And you're like, you motherfucker.

Starting point is 00:59:23 This movie... They're all still Nazis. ...has a very strong political opinion about the German. ALICE About the people of Germany. ALICE Yes, it does. Yeah, it does. And I agree with them, because it's becoming more and more apparent. ALICE I think politically right, it elides a few things, namely that like, the typical

Starting point is 00:59:38 role of Western intelligence services vis-à-vis ex-Nazis was hiring them. Like, sheltering them, using them, and yeah, I think that also it requires a degree of secrecy on the part of neo-Nazis, right, in West Germany in the 60s, that kind of wasn't really there, like, okay, they really wanted war criminals, like, you know, fled to South America, but like, that was pretty openly a kind of former SS members association kicking around, as a kind of fringe political presence. Like, this is... It's not as secretive as all that, necessarily. So as an explanation of the sort of lingering Nazi presence in West German society, West German politics, I don't think it's an accurate one,

Starting point is 01:00:33 but I think it exploits a kind of justified paranoia about it very very very well, and the one movie that I want to compare it to in that regard is Marathon Man. Which does similarly, is like, y'know, they're all fucking still Nazis, check this shit out. As controversial as it was, the first season of the Amazon show Hunters also did a pretty good job with this, I thought. Not that it's really my place to say whether it did a good or not job, but I enjoyed it. And yeah, it just strikes me as a tremendously effective spy movie. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:10 It's really fucking good, highly recommend this one, listeners, we finally found a good Euro Spy movie. Yeah. At least that's our subjective assessment. It has... This one rocks. Yeah. He's like a good spy, but he doesn't really, like, he isn't really needed to be, and it

Starting point is 01:01:24 doesn't really seem to move the needle that much. Yeah, he basically does everything right, and by right I mean to instruction, and gets fucked over by every single other person involved. Yes. Yeah. Ends the whole thing being like, I don't even, I don't know if I won that or if I was just present for something happening. It's almost nihilist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we shouldn't be engaging in this sort of subjective discussion of a movie's quality when we have objective measures available to us. We do.

Starting point is 01:01:58 We have a science-based system on this. We're conducting a four-year review of our science-based system. It's definitely super super duper scientific. I'm conducting a review on all Germans and Nazis. It's called the Scum System, it sounds as smarm, cultural insensitivity, unprovoked violence and misogyny. How smarmy is the Quillam memorandum? And I mean- Not very. He smarms her up a bit.

Starting point is 01:02:25 He genuinely thinks that he's in a normal Euro spy movie for like the first half of this and he is doing smarm throughout that. It's pretty smarmy to go up to the guy following you and be like, you looking for me? Like the whole first interrogation scene as well when he still thinks that he can just like... Oh that's high smarm. ...smooze his way out. Really really good. Well I think, I don't know, is that smarm or is that...

Starting point is 01:02:47 Cause smarm would be like Bond being like, Oh, my name's like, bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a-bird-a- He's not cracking jokes, right? He's just sucking on Max once he does finger. He's doing counter interrogation, and the stakes are very high and the tension is high, I'm not sure if he's smart. That's true. I do also want to know, just in passing, that the depiction of torture in this movie is pretty good in the sense that it doesn't do the Bond thing of like, you know, Bond's special ability is like a get rescued or escape right before you would break under torture, so we know that he doesn't.

Starting point is 01:03:32 The movie, the books have a thing apparently about like, Quillard can't break under torture, which is stupid. And this one he kind of does, and I appreciate that. And I think that does kind of help with the low smile argument. So I mean, could do like a two, potentially. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Cultural insensitivity. All Germans and Nazis may be culturally insensitive, but in 1966 I defy you to say that it doesn't contain a grain of truth. I'm pretty sure it's an old white cat.

Starting point is 01:04:01 I'm pretty sure everyone who speaks in this film is white, which means it's gotta be at least two. read a book of views. I'm pretty sure everyone who speaks in this film is white, which means it's gotta be at least two. Yes, admission is always two. Other than that though, I'm kind of struggling a little bit. Yeah, I really don't think so. He doesn't do yellow face at any point? Does strangely say...

Starting point is 01:04:18 You're so white. But like... Yeah, I don't know why he says that. That doesn't really jive with anything else he says. Even that, like, could be him trying to bait her is the thing. Oh, David, me trying to seduce a Nazi. You look so Aryan tonight, sweetie. No, he is. That's 100% what he's doing. Straight up. Cause he has suspected her from the start.

Starting point is 01:04:40 I think a lot of the misogyny is like, well, is he being misogynistic, or is he like trying to test her? Oh, this movie's so good. Like, cause like in the first meeting with her, he's going there like, hey man, listen, I think I've got some sympathy here. I think the United States should be strong, you know? What's wrong with thinking your country should be strong? Yeah, yeah. I think even the whispered, you're so white is...

Starting point is 01:05:03 You're so white, you probably think this song is about you. You're so white. Yes. What do you think this pod is about you? You walked into the party like you're walking into a rite? I don't know, this is nothing. Okay, that's pretty good, hold on. Okay, we can't do any more of it.

Starting point is 01:05:27 This is like, one? Yeah. Two, two, our mission is baseline two, so two. Oh, two, two, yeah. Unprovoked violence? No, it's all pretty provoked, like, I mean... Yeah, he doesn't really do much, actually. Ooh, it's looking like this could be a good film.

Starting point is 01:05:41 Yeah, it seems so, I mean, he he really fights the Nazis when he's trying to escape from their Nazi torture basement, which is pretty fucking provoked as far as I'm concerned. RILEY You're allowed to fight Nazis. ALICE At any time. RILEY Just in general, even if they don't have you in a torture basement. ALICE Yeah, Nazis are inherently provocative. RILEY Yeah. ALICE Yeah, I mean.

Starting point is 01:06:01 RILEY Just don't fucking... No? ALICE It might be zero, yeah. RILEY Yeah, genuinely. ALICE In which case it. No? It might be zero, yeah. Yeah, genuinely. In which case it's all gonna come down to Misocchini. In which case- It always does.

Starting point is 01:06:10 There is one woman, and that woman is a... deceptive? They both are, I guess. Well, there's two women, okay fine. But they're both deceptive. There's two women, one of them is old and evil, and the other is like, sexy and evil. Crucially... Is she? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:29 I mean... But I think it's ambiguous as to whether or not she's evil. I don't think it's ambiguous by the end. I think it's ambiguous throughout, and I think the end is designed to tip you over into like she is one million percent a Nazi. Yeah. I don't think you're supposed to like have cracked it before the last scene. Part of the reason I found the ending so like heartbreaking was because like, these people

Starting point is 01:06:48 do like each other, but also they can't trust each other. Because like, she might be a Nazi, but also maybe she's not, and like he has to walk away. Like, I also think about like, not that I'm the final arbiter on this, but like, I think about would I want to play this role? Like, or am I going to be like getting a script for this and but like, I think about would I want to play this role? Like, or am I gonna be like getting a script for this and being like, I'm offended as a woman? I would love to play a role like this because she's so good. ALICE It is a really good role, and it is really like, ambiguous. JUSTIN Yeah, they tried- they wrote a woman with depth, you know, they tried giving her

Starting point is 01:07:17 two or three layers. ALICE I mean, unfortunately that depth is Nazi, but like... NICOLA Maybe! It's Nazi, but like... Maybe. It's Nazi questionable. Yeah. But they don't shag the first time they meet, like there's no sort of pussy clock bond shit, like she's not found in a bikini, she's like a woman with a career, like yeah she's very beautiful but like... It's an interesting detournement of the kind of like typical bond girl thing, particularly the I love you.

Starting point is 01:07:43 Yeah. like, typical Bond girl thing. Particularly the I love you. Which, if you do read her as a Nazi, right, which I do, that strikes me as, like, a slightly overplayed hand. Yes, a little bit. Yes, exactly. That's why he responds so, like, oddly to it, I think, is... But, but, but, James, I love you. Knowing she's gonna be the kind of, like, bait in that trap, like, an hour hour later is pretty fucking devious. Mothafucka, I dunno.

Starting point is 01:08:09 I think it might be really low. Yeah, this is low as well. Like a one or a two? Again, not that it's my place, but- I don't know, like, one? Two? I could go for one. One? I'm struggling to think-

Starting point is 01:08:23 This might be the best movie we've ever seen. Well, that gives it a total score of, I guess so, five. Which means, it has in fact now beaten The Bourne Identity. This is the best film we've ever seen. You know what, it deserves it. I think it does. I think it does. This is the very definition of Diamond in the Rough.

Starting point is 01:08:43 To be hip with the Quiller Memorandum this late in the season, I'm over the moon. I agree, I think this is one of the best films I've seen in recent times. This is like the festivus hitting in the last season of Seinfeld, you know, we still got it baby. I do want to award it a kind of 125 miscellaneous points, because at no point in this does he write a memorandum nor read one. It's a very uncle movie title, isn't it, it's like, where's the fucking green hat? Where's the helicopter?

Starting point is 01:09:10 Who the fuck are the karate killers, and where is your memorandum? I genuinely wrote down like two thirds of the way, and boy if you don't start working on that memorandum... Bro, it's you! You're running out of time! Well, actually, at the end, Alec Guinness says I want a full report, so presumably that's what will be in the Marimba. That'll be the Marimba. ALICE I needed another real's worth of him typing.

Starting point is 01:09:35 JUSTIN Yeah, the whole credit should have just been him typing a little report. ALICE Aww. With the little Homer Simpson reading glasses. JUSTIN Yeah. Yeah, I fucking loved this movie, I had a really good time. You should watch this movie. It's great, he has a kind of Columbo affect for a lot of it too.

Starting point is 01:09:50 He does. Just one last thing, all Germans are Nazis. It's really pretty good. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, all Germans are Nazis. And we'll see you next time. Kim Patras, not a Nazi. I mean...

Starting point is 01:10:00 Well, you've shown yourself to not be able to tell ifras, not a Nazi. Nah, I mean... Well, you've shown yourself to not be able to tell if a woman's a Nazi. Yeah, clearly. Like, this woman's Hitler particle detector is busted. Like... I guess, yeah. We're gonna recalibrate you, motherfucker. I need to take it into the shop and have my Hitler detector.

Starting point is 01:10:22 3.6 Himmlers? That's not great, not terrible. I think it's pretty terrible. 3.6 Himmlers, that's not great, not terrible. I think it's pretty terrible. 3.6 Himmlers? I think that's pretty fucking terrible. That's pretty bad! One of them was bad enough! Consider what they did with one! One of them caused a lot of problems! Alright, that's the podcast.

Starting point is 01:10:38 Yeah, podcast over now, thank you so much. We have a Patreon, you can listen to it. The next bonus episode is gonna be... Question mark. Is it your pick? Is it my pick? It might be my pick actually. No, because I picked card counter, it is mine.

Starting point is 01:10:50 Okay. Okay, great, perfect. We'll see you next time. Bye everyone. Bye! Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. If you're listening to this, that makes you a Patreon supporter of the show. Thank you so much for letting us do this as a full-time job.

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Starting point is 01:13:06 Zoe Shepherd, Talkative Tiger, Lauren Bastin and... Kariada. Thank you for keeping this show going. This show is of course November, Abigail and Devon, our producer, the wonderful Mr. Napier Thayer, podcast art by Mattie Lepchanski, our website by Tom Allen. And I'll see you next time.

Upstream - S3E19: The Quiller Memorandum

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