Spionaggio al vertice

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.

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.

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.

"Man on a String" stars the great Ernest Borgnine ("The Wild Bunch") as Boris Mitrov, a character inspired by the real-life Borris Morros. Boris is a Russian-born American citizen running a film studio who is essentially blackmailed into becoming a counter-spy. This will see him travel to both Berlin and Moscow to gather information for the amusingly dubbed "C. B. I." (the "Central Bureau of Intelligence"!).

"Man on a String" is largely notable for taking a documentary-style approach, complete with narration, by both Clete Roberts ("The Swinger") and Borgnine himself. The Roberts narration mostly tells us things we can already see for ourselves, while Borgnines' voice-over is more interesting as he observes the progress of his homeland and its citizens decades later. Overall, the film is generally entertaining, although it's largely dialogue and performance driven, only working in some action and suspense during the finale. But this finale is quite good, as we see the unarmed Boris running for his life and we wonder *how* he can possibly get out of a life-or-death situation.

Borgnine is thoroughly engaging here, and is ably supported by fantasy star Kerwin Mathews ("The 7th Voyage of Sinbad") here wearing a suit and tie as Boris' "assistant" at the studio. The excellent supporting cast also includes Colleen Dewhurst ("The Dead Zone"), Alexander Scourby ("The Big Heat"), Glenn Corbett ("Chisum"), Russian-born character actor Vladimir Sokoloff ("The Magnificent Seven"), who's endearing as Boris' father, and Ed Prentiss ('Trackdown').

Partly working as a travelogue, the globe-hopping also helps to make this espionage thriller decent entertainment, and in fact the film employed four different cinematographers for its four main settings. The efficient direction is courtesy of Hungarian-born Andre De Toth, who made his mark as a filmmaker with such efforts as the original "House of Wax" and the film noir classic "Crime Wave".

Seven out of 10.

These sort of espionage stories are not favorites of mine unless done with a storyline that is not too convoluted, as is sometimes the case in these kind of spy thrillers. But if they're taut and suspenseful throughout, I can forgive too many complications. Fortunately, the cat-and-mouse game played here is understandable enough and crackles with suspense and tension.

MAN ON A STRING is a spy thriller based on the true-life adventures of a real counter-spy Boris Morros (dubbed Boris Mitrov here), played by ERNEST BORGNINE. While the plotting is far from simple, it's easy enough to enjoy the air of menace and danger that permeates the entire story without getting bogged down into the details of entrapment that always accompany these spy stories.

It moves at a brisk pace under the direction of Andre deToth (for awhile, he was a husband of Veronica Lake in the '40s), and all of it is filmed on locations in East and West Germany. KERWIN MATTHEWS is Borgnine's fellow spy assigned to guide him through the various activities, COLLEEN DEWHURST does well in her second film after a couple of TV roles, and GLENN CORBETT is excellent as a government agent.

It's rather talky for the first hour and then builds to a tense climax among the deserted buildings of East Germany when Mitrov's activities become known to the Russians, which leads to a shootout scene that caps the ending in a satisfying and suspenseful way.

Borgnine gives a solid performance and the film itself is well worth watching.

There's a narration that gives it an almost documentary approach, somewhat like another film produced by Louis De Rochemont, THE HOUSE ON 92nd STREET.

Summing up: Crisp, exciting spy thriller.