THE DEFECTOR

Shot on location in West Germany (and raise your hand if you remember when there were two Germanys ,West and East), and on a rather meager budget (which explains the tinny, echoey sound) THE DEFECTOR (1966) is a down-beat, grim Cold War spy thriller that trades action and suspense for character study, mood and atmosphere. As such, it's a perfect time capsule of that period in world history, an exploration of a time and place when the United States and the Soviet Union waged a subtle, low-key, but nonetheless deadly game.

Produced at a time when every American (and many foreign) studios were desperately trying to cash in on the the red hot spy film craze, THE DEFECTOR stars Montgomery Clift in what was sadly his last screen appearance. When a Russian physicist decides to defect to the West, he brings along a microfilm that contains top secret scientific material. CIA operative Adams (Roddy McDowell), recruits American scientist James Bower (Clift) to go across the Iron Curtain, meet the physicist and take possession of the film.

But when Bower arrives in East Germany, he finds that all is not what it seems. Bower is  immediately placed under surveillance by Peter Heinzmann (Hardy Kruger), a German scientist who admires Bower's work and has a connection to the defecting Russian, meets and romances a lovely young nurse, Frieda Hoffman (Macha Meril), and undergoes a night in a hotel room that is designed to subject him to psychedelic hallucinations (a neat idea that seems more at home in a Bond film and is only used once in the film). Bower soon learns that the Russian scientist has been killed and even though he does eventually gain the microfilm, the information contained within is worthless.

Bower now wants only to escape back to the west but Heinzmann wants him to defect to the east where he can continue his research and the two men can work together. Bower wants none of that and the third act is a tense race against time as Bower attempts to cross the border to freedom.

THE DEFECTOR was produced, written and directed by Raoul Levy (from a novel by Paul Thomas), who died before the film was released. It's a shame he never lived to see his work on the big screen. If you're looking for 007 thrills and chills, keep moving along. You won't find them here. But if you want an intelligent, well acted and compelling spy film, THE DEFECTOR fills the bill.

Thumbs up.