El agente del diablo

Peter Van Eyck came from a noble and rich family. The war ended all that, and now he makes a living as a wine merchant. His real source of income is as a spy for the Russians. And the Americans. And the East Germans. He recognizes he's got too many bosses, and wants to get out, but he can't.

John Paddy Carstair's last theatrical release is a dark little thriller, well populated with fine performers like Macdonald Carey, Marianne Koch, Christopher Lee, Marius Goring, Billie Whitelaw, and Eric Pohlman. In a year when James Bond was the big news, with its sexy spies and big production, a dirty little movie like this was swimming against the tide, no matter how good it was. And it is, very good, but just a few years too early for a countertrend that would make itself known in.adaptations of John LeCarre.

Van Eyck had a leg up in his performance. Like his character, he was born in a wealthy and noble Pomeranian family. He, however, was not interested in the family's military tradition. Instead, he went to Berlin to study music. He left Germany in 1931 and came to New York, where he made friends with Irving Berlin and became a composer and performer in night club music. A later friendship with Billy Wilder led him to acting. His blond looks let him play Nazis for most of a decade, and then he tried expanding his range with movies like this. He died in 1969, one day short of his 58th birthday.

Despite a spicy title like "The Devil's Agent" and it being a spy story, this is an incredibly dull movie. I just expected so much more energy and thrills...but didn't get them.

Georg (Peter van Eyck) lives in Vienna in 1950. While his family had wealth and power during the Nazi era, now he is forced to live modestly. However, when he sees an old friend (Christopher Lee) and is invited into the Soviet sector to do some fishing, western operatives take notice. After all, the 'friend' is also Soviet spy...and they assume the communists are trying to recruit him as a courier. So, after meeting with BOTH sides, Georg decides to work for both the Soviets and the western powers. As such, it's tough to know where his loyalties actually lie.

Dull...slow...pondering...all words that seem appropriate for this movie. It's not terrible, but I almost wish it was because with a terrible film you have strong feelings. But with this one...I had none and had a tough time sticking with it.

This seemed as if this was two separate tv episodes ditched together. The first mainly set in Hungary was reasonably good,but the second dragged on interminably.

I note that one of the producers was Artur Brauner who i acted for professionally 40 years ago. A remarkable man who escaped the Holocaust,had a prolific film career,and died a few years ago,having reached his centenary.

The film seemed to be populated with many familiar character actors of the era. Only Sam Kidd was missing. Though Michael Brennan as a Hungarian agent takes some believing.

. One of the lesser films from the sixties portraying the on going battle between spies frI'm both sides.

This was another low-budget Christopher Lee movie that I was totally unfamiliar with – in fact, I had initially mistaken it as merely an alternate title for the Edgar Wallace "Krimi" THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL (1961; which I also recently acquired in tribute to his passing and which I will be getting to presently)!

That said, the result proved quite a surprise – not least for the remarkable cast its producers managed to hire: Peter Van Eyck in a rare and atypically heroic leading role; Macdonald Carey (who had just supplied the obligatory marquee value to Hammer's extraordinary THESE ARE THE DAMNED {shot 1961 but released 1963}), a one-armed Marius Goring, Walter Gotell, Albert Lieven (also from THE DEVIL'S DAFFODIL and who had himself assumed the central part for director Carstairs' SLEEPING CAR TO TRIESTE {1948}), Marianne Koch, Niall MacGinnis, Eric Pohlmann, Peter Vaughan and Billie Whitelaw. Incidentally, the IMDb claims that Peter Cushing was also involved but had his scenes deleted – however, I doubt this, since that same site also gives the running-time as 77 minutes…while my "Something Weird Video"(!) print clocks in at 97! As for Lee, though his role is fairly brief, it is the one that sets the protagonist on his globe-trotting doom-laden path.

Indeed, the film is an episodic Cold War thriller (the title, then, boasts no occult underpinning but merely refers to Van Eyck's precarious status within the narrative as a spy working both sides!) made before the subgenre's heyday, which kicked off around 1965; with this in mind, the plot line is predictably convoluted and decidedly short on action, yet the whole emerges a reasonably suspenseful outing just the same – complete with an unexpected downbeat 'curtain'. Interestingly, nominal leading lady Koch's best-known role was similarly a damsel-in-distress saved by a double-faced hero, albeit against a Wild West setting, i.e. Sergio Leone's seminal A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)!

The Devil's Agent is a spy thriller that I thought pleasant viewing, at least the first half of it (it loses momentum after the mid-point), though it never gets very thrilling. The lead is played by Peter Van Eyck, who is really not a good fit as a leading man--too shallow and one-note. When Van Eyck and Christopher Lee bump into each other in a train station in the opening scene, greeting each other as old school chums who are delighted to see each other after these many years, the palpable lack of warmth between these two cold fish can't help but make the scene seem unreal, almost verging on a Saturday Night Live skit.

In my opinion, there are only four really interesting things about the movie. First, the credits give Hans Habe, the author of the novel that is the source of the picture the TINIEST credit I have ever seen in any movie. This must be an interesting story behind this; he must've done something that really pissed off one of the producers (probably Artur Brauner).

The three other interesting things are the performances of Billie Whitelaw as a bar girl in a strange Budapest night club, Helen Cherry as Chris Lee's sister, and Marius Goring as a German general. Whitelaw's idiosyncratic performance is a case of a fine actress trying to do more with a stock part than it warrants, so that her sexy-sensitive-enigmatic B-girl seems all but surreal with her unconvincing Hungarian accent, fake laugh and sudden inappropriate smiling it seems too much like a trying-to-do-everything acting class exercise. It's hard to believe that even a naive and horny guy like Van Eyck is playing would not be on his guard against her. The scene ends with her bending over him in a way that is both sexy-maternal and kind of vampirish. Odd as it is, this scene is the highlight of the movie, for me at least. In the same scene, I noticed that when she tells Van Eyck that four people sitting at at nearby table are "the leaders of the Communist Party in Budapest," they make the mistake of cutting in a few shots of them that are almost laughable--four very ordinary looking Irish extras, none of whom look like they could be leaders of anything.

I will say that director John Paddy Carstairs and art director Tony Inglis do a good job of creating a seedy middle-European ambiance on what must have been a limited budget. The English actress Helen Cherry plays Christopher Lee's dignified but warm and charming older sister with real distinction. The only thing is she maybe expends too much "warmth" toward the cold and remote Van Eyck not to seem a bit suspicious. An interesting performance though.