Funeral in Berlin (1966)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Theatrical Trailer-2:51
Rating	?
Year Of Production	1966
Running Time	97:58
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (55:48)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Guy Hamilton
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Michael Caine Paul Hubschmid Oskar Homolka Eva Renzi Guy Doleman Hugh Burden Heinz Schubert Wolfgang Völz Thomas Holtzmann Günter Meisner Herbert Fux Rainer Brandt Rachel Gurney
Case	?
RPI	$24.95	Music	Konrad Elfers

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired French German Swedish Danish Norwegian Finnish Dutch Bulgarian Icelandic Portuguese Hebrew Greek Croatian Arabic Turkish Polish Italian Spanish Romanian Czech Hungarian Slovenian Serbian Italian Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

It was going to be a lovely funeral.
Harry Palmer just hoped it wouldn't be his...

    Len Deighton wrote a number of spy novels, including some about reluctant spy Harry Palmer. Michael Caine played Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, and Billion Dollar Brain. This was the young and active Michael Caine, star of Alfie, The Italian Job, and Get Carter, not the older, more sedate one we see today.

    You have to remember that the novel was written at the height of the Cold War, and made into a film in the 1960s. The movie plays fairly well today, but there are elements that jar a little every so often.

    The film starts with Harry (Michael Caine) being summoned by his boss, Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) on a weekend. Being obstreperous, he is surly about this, and arrives late. He is told that he will go to Berlin and facilitate the defection of Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka), the Russian in charge of the East German side of the Berlin Wall. Palmer doesn't believe that Stok wants to defect, and says so, but is overruled. He arrives in Berlin and is greeted by an old friend, Johnnie Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), the (West German) Berlin contact. Palmer is "forced" to allow himself to be seduced by a suspicious, but gorgeous, woman (Eva Renzi). He rapidly determines that there are several parties to this affair, and that he will be lucky to survive.

    This is a fairly good film, particularly in context. It was never going to pose a serious threat to the James Bond franchise, which was seriously rolling at the time, with Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger (also directed by Guy Hamilton, who directed this), and Thunderball already out, and You Only Live Twice to follow, but it was a reasonable thriller. It's a bit dated now, but is still worth watching.

Video

    This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio — IMDB claims the film was shot in Techniscope, but the credits quite clearly say "Filmed in Panavision"... The movie is in remarkably good shape for one that's closing in on its fortieth birthday — the film must have been stored very carefully, or it has been restored well, although I doubt the latter.

    The image is a little soft, but clear. Film grain is constant but is generally not a problem, although in some shots, such as at 20:26, it's rather obvious. Shadow detail is fair, but shadows drop off into black more quickly than desirable. The only noticeable low-level noise is at 19:54.

    Colour is dull, but that's a result of production design more than poor film technique. The film was done in Technicolor. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are a few tiny film artefacts, but amazingly few on a film of this age. See the three tiny dots at the bottom of frame at 17:10 for an example of how small the film artefacts are.

    There is a lot of aliasing, most of it mild, but it is almost continuous and afflicts every moving edge. There's no much in the way of moiré, though. There's frequent background shimmer. There is occasional telecine wobble, most noticeably around 15:30. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in English, and twenty three other languages, plus English for the Hearing Impaired. I watched the English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles — they are fairly accurate, easy to read, and well-timed to the dialogue.

    The disc is single-sided and dual-layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change, which lies at 55:48, is noticeable, but not particularly disruptive.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in five languages, including English. I only listened to the English. It's a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, but it's mono, at 192 kbps. The original soundtrack was mono, so that's fine. It's not a high fidelity soundtrack, but that's fine for this film — there's some very minor distortion, but it is more a case of blink and you'll miss it.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible (except for sounding rather muffled around 71:35), but there are several instances where the audio is slightly out of sync with the video: 20:51, 24:39, 51:17, 52:29, and 76:15 are fairly obvious — basically just sloppy ADR.

    The score, from Konrad Elfers, is rather lacking in subtlety — it is clichéd and obvious, in fact and not a big enhancement to the movie.

    The surrounds and subwoofer get nothing to do.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. It's simple to use.

Theatrical Trailer (2:51)

    This trailer gives an excellent simulation of what the film might have looked like: very dirty and crackly.

    This film was released on DVD in Region 1 in 2001. From all reports, the Region 1 DVD is no better than this one, with no extras other than the same poor quality trailer. The R1 is apparently mislabelled as being 1.85:1 but is really 2.35:1, just like this one. If you are keen on collecting this movie, you can buy either version and get the same quality.

    A thriller that is a bit dated, but still satisfies, on a bare-bones DVD.

    The video quality is quite decent for a film of this age.

    The audio quality is adequate, but not very good.

    The only extra is a poor quality trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall