Permission to Kill

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Permission to Kill
Permission to Kill001.jpeg
Original film poster by Robert Tanenbaum [1]
Directed by Cyril Frankel
Written by Robin Estridge
Produced byPaul Mills
Starring Dirk Bogarde
Ava Gardner
Bekim Fehmiu
Cinematography Freddie Young
Edited byErnest Walter
Music by Richard Rodney Bennett
Production
company
Distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures (in the United Kingdom through Columbia-Warner Distributors [2] )
Release date
  • 20 November 1975 (1975-11-20)(UK)
Running time
93 minutes
CountriesAustria
United Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish

Permission to Kill (also known as The Executioner and Vollmacht Zum Mord) is a 1975 Austrian/American/British spy thriller film directed by Cyril Frankel and starring Dirk Bogarde, Ava Gardner and Bekim Fehmiu with Timothy Dalton, Nicole Calfan and Frederic Forrest. [3] It was produced by Paul Mills from a screenplay by Robin Estridge, made by Sascha-Verleih and distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures. The film had original music by Richard Rodney Bennett and the cinematography was by Freddie Young.

Contents

Plot

British agents try to stop a communist returning home from the West. [4]

Partial cast

Production

The film was shot at the Sievering Studios in Vienna and on location in Gmunden, Austria.[ citation needed ]

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A suspense thriller entirely devoid of tension since Robin Estridge, from whose novel it is adapted, has failed to provide his protagonist Diakim with an authentic political identity. Lacking the vaguest idea who Diakim is or what he stands for, audiences can hardly be expected to feel strongly about his life or his death. The plot's overall lack of definition is not improved by the tritely ominous secrecy surrounding the character of Curtis, an agent of implausible efficiency and ruthlessness who would have been more at home in a fantasy thriller than in this pretentious political mishmash. ... The film reaches its melodramatic nadir when Lord, his bloody chest uncovered, is laid prominently on a table in the bustling HQ of Western Intelligence Liaison, studiously ignored by the hard-hearted Curtis while a secretary dabs ineffectively at the wound with a minuscule piece of cottonwool. Bogarde, at his best for some time recently in roles requiring understated menace, here shields behind his poker-face and occasionally twitching upper lip. The tousled but still good-looking Ava Gardner, in the thin supporting role of Katina, emotes heavily in a style of acting more suited to the star vehicles of an earlier age." [5]

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References

  1. "Permission to Kill / 30x40 / USA".
  2. "Permission to Kill (1975)". BBFC . Retrieved 8 October 2021.
  3. "Permission to Kill". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 29 January 2024.
  4. "TV guide from 1988" (JPG). Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  5. "Permission to Kill". The Monthly Film Bulletin . 42 (492): 266. 1 January 1975 via ProQuest.