No need to rehash the story -- the other reviews here do that quite nicely. The film is powerful in an understated way, made particularly compelling thanks to excellent location work in many of the real locations, and of course, the suspenseful subject matter. Everything is well crafted, with lots of fascinating detail. My only minus was that I felt it was a bit heavy on narration. Nevertheless, the film will keep you riveted for 140 minutes, which can't be said for many current films. Sadly, the DVD contains no bonus features, which is why I couldn't give the product 5 stars. It would have been great to have a commentary about the real events, or even a little 10 minute featurette. Regardless, it's a worthy addition to your DVD library.
Learning Espionage the Hard Way
THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR is a well made and suspenseful drama about the real life exploits of Erik Erikson. Erikson, an ex-patriot American turned Swedish citizen, is an industrialist blackmailed into spying for the Allies. As a petroleum importer from neutral Sweden, he is able to access and catalog the Reich's oil injustry and pass along targets to the Allies.
Throughout the film, we witness the gradual change in Erikson, portrayed masterfully by William Holden, as he tranforms from coerced Allied operative to willing spy.
COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR assembled a great cast and was filmed on location in (then) West Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. Look for some familiar military film regulars in COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR including a very blonde Wolfgang Preiss (The Longest Day, Anzio, Raid on Rommel) and Werner Peters (The Battle of the Bulge). If you listen carefully, you will also hear John Banner (Sergeant Schultz of Hogan's Heroes fame) overdubbing some of the German background voices -- particularly the scene where a Polish worker is executed at the oil refinery.
COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR is more than a run-of-the-mill war movie. The film involves the audience in amateur spy Erickson's odyssey through Nazi Germany and his harrowing escape from German security forces. It was well worth the wait for this film to appear on DVD.
Smart, tight, suspense - fine cast
This movie entertained, taught, and inspired questions from my children. I recommend it as a teaching tool; it features a fine cast of actors and superb screenwriting. Carefully selected scenes of violence avoided the overload of gore. The scenes left an emotional impact, not a visual glorification. Innuendo of sex replaces the 'Buck Nekkid.'
My children watched watched this with me. Sadly, the children learn not much about the mass murder campaign against the Jewish people. Holocaust denial is vogue yet again.
John le Carre's classic spy yarn gets a suitably brisk, unromanticized telling in this quintessential Cold War movie. A British agent (Richard Burton) sets up an elaborate cover story for being lured into defecting to the Communists, but he hardly needs to manufacture his disgust and cynicism over spying. The grim business of point-counterpoint espionage has rarely been depicted with less glamour; Burton's great climactic speech on the subject is the definitive take on sinking to the level of the enemy. Claire Bloom is an offbeat love interest, and a bearded Oskar Werner is an East German investigator on Burton's case (the pecking order in the Communist spy hierarchy is a source of black humor). Director Martin Ritt extends his unvarnished approach to the movie's stripped-down look, which... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Burton - Oskar Werner Director(s): Martin Ritt DVD Release Date: Released the 13 July 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A real beauty of a true story provides the basis for The Man Who Never Was, a gripping World War II picture that has no combat scenes, no great vistas of troops. The time is 1943, as the Allies prepare the invasion of Sicily and desperately need a diversionary ploy to make the Germans suspect another invasion target. The solution is simple but ingenious: a dead man's body will be left in the sea to float ashore on the coast of Spain; made to look like a British pilot, he will be carrying papers suggesting an Allied attack on Greece. When the papers fall to the Nazis, they'll swallow the bogus story…or will they? The film's final third tracks an Irish spy for the Axis (Steven Boyd, in one of his first roles) as he travels to London to investigate loose ends.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Eye of the Needle is a superbly effective World War II spy thriller from the Ken Follett bestseller of the same name. Donald Sutherland is "the Needle," a German spy in England bearing critical information on Allied invasion plans that he must deliver personally to the Führer. He's so named because of his preferred method of assassination, the stiletto. As played by Sutherland, he's a coldly calculating psychopath, emotionlessly focused on the task at hand, whether the task is to signal a U-boat or to gut a witness to avoid exposure. On his way back to Germany, a fierce storm strands him on an island, occupied only by a woman (Kate Nelligan), her disabled husband, and the lighthouse keeper. A romance of sorts develops between the woman and the spy, due to an... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Donald Sutherland - Kate Nelligan Director(s): Richard Marquand DVD Release Date: Released the 15 May 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Director Stanley Kramer's socially conscious 1961 film tackles the subject of the war crime trials arising out of World War II in an earnest and straightforward fashion, exploring the consciousness of two nations as they struggle to come to terms with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Spencer Tracy plays the American judge selected to head the tribunal that will try the suspected war criminals. As he sets about his task, he must confront the raw emotion felt by the German people, and his own notions of good and evil, right and wrong. Regarded as a classic, this stark rendering of one of the most pivotal events in the 20th century features a stellar cast including Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, a young William Shatner, and Maximillian Schell, who won an Oscar for his... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Spencer Tracy - Burt Lancaster - Richard Widmark Director(s): Stanley Kramer DVD Release Date: Released the 07 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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