Man on a String

This is a decent Cold War film about a Russian film director working in the United States. While he is not a Communist, his "friends" are and while he tells himself he isn't working for them, he has accepted favors and naively thinks it will all somehow work out. However, when he is confronted by the CBI(?) (a fictional US government agency), he realizes he's become a Communist stooge and agrees to help the US in a counter-espionage mission behind the Iron Curtain.

While the film is a decent enough time-passer and the last 1/3 of the film is pretty exciting, it has one giant problem and a few small ones. Oddly, they decided to cast Ernest Borgnine as the Russian Director yet he never even sounds the least bit Russian and you can STILL detect his New York accent. This makes the entire film seem rather cheesy and very tough to believe. Had they recast the film and perhaps punched up the first 1/3, it could have been an exciting spy yarn. Oddly, just a few years later, Borgnine was cast as a Russian in ICE STATION ZEBRA and he was able to do a decent Russian accent! Additionally, when Borgnine's character went to Moscow, it looked like a bad travelogue with all the stock footage inserted rather haphazzardly into the movie. As it is, it's just passable entertainment and a mildly interesting curio of the Cold War.

By the way, don't get the idea I hate Cold War films--I am a history teacher and naturally love a good espionage film and could recommend several good ones such as I MARRIED A COMMUNIST and ASSIGNMENT Paris.

Ernest Borgnine, now almost 90 years of age and still acting for Hollywood, went in 1960 to Berlin to play the main character called Boris Mitrov in an east - west drama of director André de Thoth called Man On The String. He is the man on the (black and white) run for cover through east Berlin before the great Wall was built and Kennedy named himself a Berliner. Borgnine has learned in Moscow the names of American spies in the states; he memorizes them and is picked up by a friendly helper next to the American sector and is taken in a nice Mercedes sedan car back to Uncle Sams sector where he spills the beans. Not much later Billy Wilder went to Berlin as well an made a great comedy about Coca Cola and the rest of the world. De Thoth picture isn't funny at all and actually the time before and after the making of the big Wall was not to laugh at. So director de Thoth decided to play the semi documentary card and one must say he succeeded in giving an impression of the area around the Brandenburg Gate and the nowhere land that is today called again Pariser Platz. So the artwork he took straight from the streets and ruins of cause of the western sectors. 15 years after the war quite some parts of West Berlin still looked pretty far from nowadays and were well to use as action areas suggesting the Hollywood staff had permission to film beyond the American sector right in the middle of East Berlin.

Borgnine is an unusual type of spy and he decorates the scenes in the Moscow offices of the soviet secret service fairly well. Of cause he is not Paul Newman who is also a spy memorizing a secret formula in the Torn Curtain of Mr. Hitchcock a little later but not a bad alternative.

The area next to the reborn American embassy and also not far from the Russian embassy was in the meantime nicely swept and one would need skilled optical and digital works to bring back an image of the invisible iron curtain of 1960. Spy games of the old fashion type are presently not fashionable, spy games star no more Borgnine but Redford and Pitt and are placed in the near east in colour and scope. I am beginning to like Borgnine in his black suit tumbling over the ruins of Berlin and showing his life long gap between teeth.

There are Things that Highlight this Low-Budget Spy Drama based on a True Account.

Ernest Borgnine in a Rather Restrained Performance that doesn't quite Capture the Suspense and Intrigue Needed to Fully Flesh Out the Super-Serious Story.

But it has some Intrigue with Agents on Both Sides Everywhere except Under the Bed.

Gadgets Galore Proliferate Scenes with Tape Recorders, Cameras, and a Myriad of Privacy Penetrating Hardware Showcased Regularly Through this Detailed Drama.

It Depicts the Soviets in Full Force Plotting Their way to World Domination.

The Second Half Kicks-In after a Slow and Talky Start.

There are Interesting Plot Devices as Director De Toth Builds Suspense with Odd Scenes of Behind the Scenes at KGB.

Above Average and Definitely Worth a Watch for Anyone Attracted to Cold-War Espionage Films.

And this was Before the James Bond Films made all of this Big-Box-Office.

Based on the real life story of Boris Morros who was a musician instead of a film producer, Man on a String comes at the tale end of the Cold War espionage thrillers where there was absolutely no doubt as to who the good guys and bad guys were on the screen.

I can understand the reason for renaming the lead character that Ernest Borgnine plays Boris Mitrov and changing his occupation even, for dramatic purposes to give the character more scope. But for the life of me was anyone fooled when the agency he worked for was renamed the Central Bureau of Intelligence?

Borris Morros has his own page on IMDb and you can see the rather astonishing list of film credits he had, working on the scoring of a whole lot of films, some of them classics like Stagecoach. His own life gives a lie to the notion that there were no Communists in Hollywood. The blunderbuss approach taken by the House Un-American Activities Committee is another issue altogether.

The Mitrov character we see here isn't exactly stealing the atomic secrets, in fact he's not really doing any spying at all so to speak. As the Russian agent says, all they're doing with him is buying his good name to gain entrée into other places.

Our own CIA knows that and turns him into a double agent where he does perform useful work in identifying Soviet agents here. In real life it wasn't quite as dramatic as shown in Man on a String.

One thing that is of interest is that Man on a String, made as it was in 1960 in the wake of Nikita Khruschev's boast about how he would bury America. That is their attitude, that victory for them was inevitable because Marx said that's how history was flowing. It's interesting to watch this film now in the light of the fall of the Soviet Union. And it fell because it's economy couldn't keep spending militarily and provide its citizens with basic necessities.

Man on a String is a Cold War relic, but interesting viewing nonetheless.

Well, that's not an authentic red scare period film, as were BIG JIM MC LAIN, INVASION USA, WHIP HAND, and so many US propaganda films that spread during the fifties. It speaks of the war between Western authorities and Behind the iron Curtain forces, the "evil" ones, but in a smart, sensitive, and brilliant way. It is purely espionage, spy scheme, as there were so many in the sixties, and even after. Ernest Borgnine is excellent in this ambivalent role, for whom the audiences of this era, who were more used to be on the good American side, for once, could feel a bit discomfortable with such an unusual lead character. Solid Andre De Toth directing.