Streng geheim (1963) Online

Matchbox-Dave is wrong. This film is not propaganda, it's mostly based on a true story. Of course some persons have been made a bit more heroic than they really were, but basically it's a true story.

This film might not meet today's standards of espionage films, but it's rather good for the time it was made. It doesn't have the excitement and action of the early Bond films, because it's supposed to be realistic.

Many people might not like the film because it shows the West as the bad side, but that was cold war - both sides did evil work. And there are more than enough films showing the East as the "evil empire".

For Eyes Only is a delightful spy story, shot in black and white, with sturdy guys strolling around in raincoats, reminiscent of The Third Man or Humphrey Bogart films. It is 1961. The American Military Information Department in West-Germany plans to support anti-communist groups in the GDR (East-Germany). The aim is to provoke a civil war in the GDR, which will be the start of an invasion by the NATO forces. Fortunately the GDR intelligence service (Staatssichterheitsdienst) gets wind of the affair. They realize that making the American plans public will diffuse the situation, but therefore they need convincing evidence. It happens, that since several years one of their best secret agents Lorenz alias Hansen has infiltrated the MID Headquarters in Wuerzburg. There the invasion plans are hidden in a safe. For Eyes Only is the American classification for its required degree of secrecy. Hansen gets orders to pilfer the plans, and transport them home. A complicating factor is that the Americans suspect the presence of a mole inside their organization. However, for the moment the American major Collins has full confidence in his subordinate Hansen. Collins is a somewhat shabby character, who fools around with lonely ladies and expense allowances and smuggles German art. The Americans subject their personnel in Wuerzburg to a test with a lie detector, but Hansen manages to deceive this equipment. At the same time he succeeds in copying the key of the safe. During this endeavor he discovers that there is another mole named Schuck, who also tries to steal the plans. Schuck wants to sell them to a criminal organization. Before Hansen can steal the plans, Schuck makes an attempt and is caught in the act. The Americans hand over the poor guy to his criminal clients who without process liquidate the failure (the crooks do not want any witnesses, I guess). Now the Americans feel safe, and this gives Hansen some extra time. The invasion plans have been transferred from the safe into an imitation refrigerator, and Hansen decides to pilfer the thing as a whole. Again he succeeds, and he takes the refrigerator in his car to the GDR. The Americans and their West-German allies try to catch him just as he is crossing the border zone. They perforate his car with bullets, but luckily he is able to reach the GDR border post on the other side. The invasion plans are publicized in all the news papers, making the NATO look bad, and peace is saved once more. Sighs of relief and end of story. In fact the story is based on true events, although there is some debate on whether the real refrigerator actually contained any invasion plans. The film found wide appraisal, even in the free west. But also: "The script shuns no fantasy in its invention of rude moments of suspense" (Filmkritik, Muenchen; perhaps a James Bond fan). The moments of ideological propaganda are rare. One is worth mentioning because it is so funny: the operator of the lie detector is clearly an anti-Semite. This hints at the half-hearted purge of Nazi-personnel in West-Germany, due to the reconstruction efforts and the cold war against Bolshevism, that both required a rapid reconciliation. Also for the Bolsheviks any type of anti-communism was equated to fascism (even before World War II they branded the democratic socialists as social-fascists). However, this hoax was included mainly for internal purposes, directed at the East-German audience, and will not mislead well-informed people.