Streng Geheim / For Eyes Only – Top Secret (1963) Hansen is a double agent working for the East German secret police. He has infiltrated the American Military Intelligence Division, part of a network planning to invade the GDR. Hansen’s mission is to obtain and bring back classified, top-secret documents. After the cover of several US spies is blown, Hansen’s boss suspects a leak in his own ranks and has Hansen take a lie detector test.
This first East German spy thriller was a great hit with East German audiences. It was loosely based on real events from 1956, but the allegation of a Western plot to attack the GDR was fabricated—in part to justify having built the Berlin Wall. Some film critics described the film as “the answer to the first James Bond film, Dr. No."
Chiffriert an Chef / Coded Message for the Boss (1979) Wolf Brandin, an electrical engineering student in East Berlin, gets recruited by the CIA. He immediately notifies the Stasi. His work as a double agent inevitably strains his personal life. When the CIA sends Brandin on a mission in the GDR, he uses his position to ensure the building of the Wall on August 13, 1961.
This overlooked East German spy film offers a uniquely convincing view of the individual psychology of espionage and a compelling picture of divided Berlin.
Directed by Helmut Dziuba Starring Peter Zimmermann, Karin Düwel, and Piotr Garlicki Written by Helmut Dziuba, Gisela Karau, Günter Karau, and Anne Pfeuffer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_2xsa54QEk
Die Flucht / The Flight (1977) When his proposal for international research on infant mortality is rejected, Dr. Schmith (Armin Mueller-Stahl) decides to leave East Germany. He strikes a deal with an escape agency that promises him a leading position at a children’s hospital in West Germany. But then his project is approved and his international colleagues want Dr. Schmith to head the East German research section. Moreover, he falls in love with his new colleague, Katharina (Jenny Gröllmann). At first, Schmith tries to avoid the escape agency, but they blackmail him and things turn deadly.
As the topic of escaping to the West was taboo in the GDR, The Flight is an exception in East German film history. The film won the Grand Prix at the Karoly Vary International Film Festival in 1978; but it was also the last one Armin Mueller-Stahl made at the East German DEFA Film Studios. In 1980, only two years after the release of the film, he left East Germany for the West because of professional restrictions imposed upon him after he joined protests against the expatriation of the dissident singer/songwriter Wolf Biermann.
Discovered this in my dvd collection; disturbing but business-as-usual politics: corruption, murder, scandal, blackmail, power, intrigue, etc........ 1999 film directed by George Hickenlooper, based on an unfinished screenplay by Orson Welles.
(Nigel Hawthorne is interesting to watch as the enigmatic ex-Senator, ex-pat pornographer & blackmailer who, figuratively and literally, presents William Hurt’s gubernatorial candidate character with a ‘monkey-on- your- back’ dilemma .)