Assignment K | |
---|---|
Directed by | Val Guest |
Screenplay by | Val Guest Bill Strutton Maurice Foster |
Based on | Department K 1964 novel by Hartley Howard |
Produced by | Maurice Foster Ben Arbeid |
Starring | Stephen Boyd Camilla Sparv Michael Redgrave Leo McKern Robert Hoffmann Jeremy Kemp |
Cinematography | Ken Hodges |
Edited by | Jack Slade |
Music by | Basil Kirchin |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production companies | Gildor Productions Mazurka Productions Ltd. |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 97 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Assignment K is a 1968 British spy thriller film directed by Val Guest in Techniscope and starring Stephen Boyd, Camilla Sparv, Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Robert Hoffmann and Jeremy Kemp. [1] The film was based on the 1964 novel Department K by Hartley Howard.
A British spy has his cover blown, leading to the East German Stasi kidnapping his girlfriend to try to extract information about his double agents' activities. [2]
Val Guest said "We shot it all out in Kitzbuhel, great cast: we had my Leo McKern again, and Michael Redgrave who was a very sick man, had terrible difficulties with his lines... Stephen [Boyd] was a wonderful person, a great giggler, a great professional, very nice guy." [3]
Reginald "Leo" McKern, AO was an Australian actor who appeared in numerous British, Australian and American television programmes and films, and in more than 200 stage roles. His notable roles include Clang in Help! (1965), Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons (1966), Tom Ryan in Ryan's Daughter (1970), Harry Bundage in Candleshoe (1977), Paddy Button in The Blue Lagoon (1980), Dr. Grogan in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Father Imperius in Ladyhawke (1985), and the role that made him a household name as an actor, Horace Rumpole, whom he played in the British television series Rumpole of the Bailey. He also portrayed Carl Bugenhagen in the first and second instalments of The Omen series and Number Two in the TV series The Prisoner.
The year 1966 in film involved some significant events. A Man for All Seasons won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Stephen Boyd was a Northern Irish actor. He appeared in some 60 films, most notably as the villainous Messala in Ben-Hur (1959), a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. He received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962). He also appeared, sometimes as a hero and sometimes as a malefactor, in the major big-screen productions The Night Heaven Fell (1958), The Bravados (1958), The Best of Everything (1959), Imperial Venus (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Genghis Khan (1965), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Shalako (1968).
Val Guest was an English film director and screenwriter. Beginning as a writer of comedy films, he is best known for his work for Hammer, for whom he directed 14 films, and for his science fiction films. He enjoyed a long career in the film industry from the early 1930s until the early 1980s.
The Deadly Affair is a 1967 British spy film based on John le Carré's first novel, Call for the Dead (1961). The film stars James Mason and was directed by Sidney Lumet from a script by Paul Dehn.
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Camilla Sparv is a Swedish actress, noted for her role opposite James Coburn in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966).
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