Un certain Monsieur Bingo

I just finished writing about the first episode of the television show It Takes a Thief and I could almost take that plot synopsis and use it with Requiem for a Secret Agent. Tired of seeing agents killed one after the other in Morocco, a spy agency decides to think outside the box and send in a specialist of sorts. They hire a mercenary (and major bastard) named Merrill (Stewart Granger) to get to the bottom of what's going on in Morocco.

Again, as with the episode of It Takes a Thief I just watched, I enjoyed Requiem for a Secret Agent up to the last act. It seemed that the film sort of loses its way and runs out of steam. The ending doesn't really work with me. Too bad, because after the first two acts, I was really enjoying the movie. Sure, as others have pointed out, it's misogynistic and violent - but so are a lot of other spy-type films from the 60s/70s, including the much-beloved James Bond. I think the big difference is that here, Granger is our hero, but his Merrill doesn't always act as we have come to expect. Smacking women around and using them the way he does isn't a very heroic quality. However, Merrill treats everyone horribly - men and women. I'm not defending him - he's really is a bastard. But he is a bastard that gets the job done. And in the world in which he operates, that seems to be all that matters to him and the people who hire him.

Highlights for me include: the Moroccan locations, the title song, the unusual opening (two characters that I assumed would play a large part in the movie are killed in the first 15 minutes), Peter van Eyck (what a baddie!), and the cat and mouse game played by Granger and van Eyck. As far as negatives go, beyond the poor final scenes I've already mentioned, my biggest complaint is with Daniela Bianchi's role - it's not big enough.

While this movie can't be considered a classic due to its low-budget and uneven acting, it does have an appeal for me, in some strange way. Stewart Granger is all smiles and morally corrupt in his actions, but there's something about his character that makes you wonder where he originated from and what set him on the path to being the bastard that he is at an older age, compared to his younger compatriots. When he does unleash that smile upon hearing about an offer of more money to do a job, you can't help but laugh at his smarmy style.

He's like the dark side of espionage...something the genre of spy films rarely recognizes as a possibility, in that any man in such a world doesn't need any morals, he just needs finances to get the job done, whatever it may be. This is also something verbally acknowledged by those who hire him for the job early in the film. They don't want an upstanding citizen or agent...his actually being a bastard is what makes him right for the task, because those he faces are just as bad!

The title, while connected to events in the film, is also saying something about the whole genre of spy films at that time; that these men, being a Bourne, a Bond or whomever, can't always be doing the right thing for the right reasons, and that such films as a whole are more often about assassins and men of violence than those of noble and misunderstood heroes. (and yet, there is a touch of nobility and honor to his character in the film, too)

Maybe that's reading more into what is essentially a low-budget take on the popular espionage films of the 60's, but I think the film has a better script, and some decent enough dialogue, to make it hard to ignore completely. And Stewart Granger is a delight to watch as a gray-haired, older anti-hero spy-for-hire.

After another one of their secret agents is killed in Morocco, the American government contracts the services of a highly skilled mercenary by the name of "Jimmy Merrill" (Stewart Granger) to find out the identity of the people behind it. To that end, upon arriving at the airport in Tangier, Merrill meets with an inexperienced Norwegian agent named "Erik" (Giulio Bosetti) who has been assigned to help him gather some leads with the deceased agent's mistress named "Betty Lou" (Manolita Barraso) being of particular interest. Not only that, but during the course of their investigation, the deceased agent's wife "Evelyn" (Daniela Bianchi) also becomes involved. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was a fairly interesting cloak-and-dagger Eurospy film which benefited from a solid performance by Stewart Granger. Additionally, having several attractive actresses like Giorgia Moll (as Erik's assistant named "Edith") along with both Manolita Barraso and Daniela Bianchi definitely helped the scenery as well. On that note, however, I must say that I was somewhat disappointed with the lack of screen time given to Daniela Bianchi who, I believe, should have had a much more prominent role. But that's just my opinion. Be that as it may, although this film pales in comparison to the James Bond films made during this time, I suppose it was adequate for the time spent, and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

There is nothing good about this film. The catalogue of all its sordid B-class shortcomings would be endless. Even the music fails completely in desperately trying to add some romantic feeling in this cold-blooded orgy of superficial gangster nonsense. Stewart Granger is fairly good, he always is, but it is sad to see him in such an almost humiliating performance in comparison with all his splendid earlier films. Daniela Bianchi was the Bond bride in "From Russia with Love", and here, like most Bond brides in most of those films, she does not survive, but she is the only comfort in the film for sore eyes, that find no other beauty in Tangiers, which should be an exotíc enough magnet, but here you see nothing of it, just hoodlums and murders and an intrigue growing the more boring the more complicated it gets. Sorry, I never gave much for all those Bond movies, with some exceptions, but to make a travesty of all the worst and cheapest of them just isn't worth while.

Stewart Granger's last foray into the spy genre opens with a stripper act where a bullfight film is projected onto a girl's body as she seductively removes her clothing. I can't help but see this as a metaphor for the general attitude of the film in treating women as appliances, or worse. Of Granger's three spy films made in the 60's (the other two being Red Dragon and Target For Killing), this is the most violent and misogynist.

The film wants to be a morality play but the lack of conviction for such things shows through too often to be taken seriously. It's a pretty tight little espionage thriller but the hidden agendas of the filmmakers make it clear we're in the hands of the less capable. What could have been a cynical look at the meaninglessness of politics at this level, and it certainly tries to be that, the film instead reveals itself as a showcase of redneck attitudes and poor judgment. Adding insult to injury is the fact the score by no less than Piero Umiliani is not up to the standard we have come to expect.