This might have made a fair TV movie if it hadn't been so confused and mushy. However, the addition of Clift took it out of the TV market and put it upscale. It didn't help. Clift looks terrible in the film. (He died shortly after finishing the movie). Clift is an American scientist
recruited by McDowall to spy for the CIA while on vacation in East Germany. Clift's job is to contact Messemer, a Jewish doctor, and bring back a piece of microfilm that has been smuggled out of Russia by a defecting Soviet scientist. Clift is soon uncovered by Kruger, an OGPU (now KGB) agent
determined to stop Clift from getting the film across the border. Kruger also wants to "turn" Clift and get him to defect to the East. The microfilm (like many of Hitchcock's McGuffins) is worthless. Clift enlists Messemer's nurse, Meril, to help him return to the West. They hide in the rear of a
van, then get aboard bicycles and join a group of workers going across the border. In several brief scenes he's almost caught, but he finally crosses the border in a wild sequence. Kruger, not that easily placated, goes across to get Clift. Posing as a defector, Kruger is just about to nab Clift
to take him back to the East when Kruger is killed by a truck that has "accidentally" hit him.
Anyone watching the film closely will see McDowall's eyebrows rise as he imperceptibly nods recognition to the innocent truck driver, so there's no mistaking the CIA was behind it. Clift's first picture--THE SEARCH--took place in Germany, and so did this, his last. In between, he made 15 other
movies and his brief career remains an enigma to those friends and fans who loved his work. The female lead here was, at one time or another, penciled in for Simone Signoret, Leslie Caron, Monica Vitti, and Nicole Courcel. In a very small role, look for director Jean-Luc Godard as the pal of
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