The Quiller Memorandum

In a brilliant piece of programming coordination some astute individual at Film 4 Movies arranged for the Quiller Memorandum movie to be scheduled as the pope was conducting the first mass of a papal progress occurring during a misguided State Visit by the present occupant of the Vatican to the British Isles. Quiller played by George Segal is working for the British intelligence srvice to try and wipe out a deeply burid Nazi cell in Berlin. At the end of the action it appears that two German heroines of the story, a headmistress and teacher, are in fact spreading the same nazi propaganda to a new generation of German youth and that in future (post 1966) it would become impossible to tell who such people were. Try and get it on video or watch for it coming again on Film 4. The Trailer may be seen below, though the theme of Nazism has been avoided in these excerpts, particularly Segal being asked by the treacherous school mistress and former lover, "Did you get them all"-----"Nearly all" he replies and walks off passing the astonished headmistress who had believed him dead with the camera panning to the children filing passed his ex lover back into their classes. Wikipedia, linked here, also has the plot detailed, which again seems to have been sanitised of the Nazi references making it all seem somewhat irrelevant which today is clearly the opposite of the truth. (A part of the dialogue where Segal suggests it is absurd for Germany not to wish to be a powerful nation goes to the heart of the theme when he states it is perfectly reasonable that his country the USA wishes to be strong, quickly adding not aggressive). There are also some clever allusions to the then ever present British Class system in the screenplay which add to the film's chilling reality when being viewed in 2010 while a German Pope makes his triumphant way across our EU subjugated nations of our once United Kingdom.