A list of agents and collaborators, hidden by the Nazis in an Austrian lake in 1945, is sought after by various interested parties during the Cold War.A list of agents and collaborators, hidden by the Nazis in an Austrian lake in 1945, is sought after by various interested parties during the Cold War.A list of agents and collaborators, hidden by the Nazis in an Austrian lake in 1945, is sought after by various interested parties during the Cold War.
- Johann Kronsteiner
- (as Klaus-Maria Brandauer)
- Lev Benedescu
- (as Michael Haussermann)
- Anton's Companion
- (as Alf Beinell)
- Tour Guide
- (as Edward Linkers)
- First Stocky Man
- (as Karl Otto Alberty)
- Director
- Writers
- Oscar Millard
- Helen MacInnes
- Edward Anhalt(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaFilm debut of Klaus Maria Brandauer.
- Quotes
Bill Mathison: And that's what's put a bug up the international spy network's ass - a box of soggy records, twenty five or thirty years out of date? You've got to be kidding!
Chuck: Four dead bodies is not kidding, old buddy.
Bill Mathison: Hey. look, I can see a few warmed-over Nazis getting steamed up, I can see the Israelis sending out their war criminals but what the hell is our government interested in this for?
Chuck: Put your legal mind into gear, Bill. Forget the Nazi revivals, forget war criminals; think how many former German nationals the United States has in sensitive jobs. If any of the them are in the Toplitz lists, they're vulnerable to blackmail. We need to know those names. And if our guess is right, they're in the Finstersee box - wherever the hell it is.
Bill Mathison: And you think Anna Bryant knows and is going to tell me, if I ask her nicely?
Chuck: She, or her brother.
Bill Mathison: Her brother wouldn't give me the right time. Tell you what: why don't you ask them? I'll introduce you.
Chuck: I'm staying out of town until we know where the box is. I need a freehand when the action starts.
Bill Mathison: Look, there's a better idea; there's a guy named Felix Zauner. He's a friend of the family.
Chuck: Also, an Austrian intelligence agent; 'thought you were CIA, by the way. I was with him in Vienna, early this morning. Sure, he's on our side, but he's competition. My worry is that Zauner might just beat us to it just because of the old friend bit. You're clean. You've got an established business reason for seeing her. She knows you. And she seems to trust you. You're our connection, Bill. Like it or not.
American lawyer William Mathison (Barry Newman) is vacationing in Switzerland when he is asked by an American publishing firm to go to Salzburg, Austria, to contact a photographer who has written a book about Austrian lakes. Mathison immediately realises that something is amiss when he reaches the photographer's small Salzburg shop and finds the photographer missing, and his anxious wife Anna Bryant (Anna Karina) being protected with near-claustrophobic zeal by her brother Johann (Klaus Maria Brandeur). Johann initially suspects that Mathison is a secret agent and refuses to give him any information. Gradually, though, Mathison realises that Anna's husband has been murdered, having found a chest in an Austrian lake containing a list of Nazi collaborators from WWII. Agents from all over the world, including Russia, Israel, Germany, Austria and America, want to get hold of the chest. Mathison finds himself playing a delicate game of cat-and-mouse, in which he can trust virtually no-one, such as KGB sex-pot Elisa Lang (Karen Jensen) who attempts to seduce him by posing as a free-wheeling American tourist, and elderly Austrian Felix Zauner (Wolfgang Preiss), whose name is on the list because he collaborated with the Nazis during the war in order to save the life of his wife.
The film could've been pretty good, but it misses rather too many opportunities. Newman and Karina, as I've already said, are quite good, and Jensen as the KGB lady-spy also registers well. Furthermore, the locations are pleasing to the eye. But other than these scant positives, the film is a somewhat poor affair. Lee H. Katzin directs sloppily, far too frequently punctuating his movie with gimmicky editing techniques such as meaningless freeze-frames and unnecessary slow motion sequences. Katzin also ruins several key scenes by failing to make it clear quite what's going on (e.g. the finale, in which Newman and Preiss approach an abandoned gunnery post on a mountainside, is terribly rushed and seems to make little sense). At a mere 93 minutes, the film tries to cram in a heck of a lot of plotting and counter-plotting, yet too many of the characters are so hurriedly introduced that it's hard to remember who they are or what agency they work for. One scene that I DID like, however, involved Karina being kidnapped by spies and whisked away in their car. Newman - a veteran of earlier car chase movies - takes a shortcut in his own car and manages to get in front of the baddies. In a clever twist on the traditional concept of a car chase, he slows down their getaway by driving so SLOWLY that the police eventually turn up to find out who's holding up the traffic! A rare ingenious moment in an otherwise dull potboiler.
- barnabyrudge
- Apr 7, 2005
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Details
Box office
- Budget
- $1,950,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 33 minutes
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1