Purely Joyful Movie!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

***SPOILERS*** Somewhat far fetched Cold War drama with Earnest Borgnine playing the very reluctant Hollywood film producer and double agent Boris Mitrov who's manipulated by both sides The USA and Soviet Union to do their dirty work. Boris had been suckered into helping his native country the Soviet Union by Col. Vadja Kubelov, Alexander Scourby, the first secretary to the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C in the promise that it would help him have his father Papa Mitrov, Vladimar Sokoloff, and brothers giving free passage to the United States.During Boris' involvement with Kubelov & Co. he's been watched by the CIB or CIA who've been following his every move. The CIB needing to get someone inside the Soviet Union to infiltrate it's spying apparatus sees in Boris the perfect pasty who with his dealing with the Soviet here at home can only go along with them or else face life imprisonment or worse. Meanwhile Boris' Soviet handler Col. Kubelov want's him, as repayment for having his father released from a Soviet work camp, to sell out his film production company to millionaire and undercover communist Adrian Benson, Ed Prentiss, in order to have him secretly make subversive and pro Soviet movies to brainwash the American public.Things start to get very complicated when Boris, who was ordered by his now CIB controllers, goes to West Berlin to make a documentary and use it as cover to get himself into the Soviet Union to work for it's KGB as a spy against the United States. Taken in by the Moscow KGB chief Gen. Chapayen, Friedrick Joloff, as one of his newest and brightest discoveries Boris in no time at all memorizes every Soviet agent in the United States, which numbers in the thousands. Boris' cover is soon blown when Benson finds out that his house had been bugged by the CIB and together with his wife Helen, Colleen Dewhurst, makes a run for it across the US/Mexican border.Benson who was allowed to escape by the CIB, so his arrest wouldn't blow Boris's cover in the USSR, get's to Moscow via East Berlin and desperately tries to get in touch with Gen. Chapayen to alert him that Boris is rally a double agent. Boris who was informed by friend and CIB agent Avery, Kerwin Mathews, that the jig was up and told to check out of the country and take a plane to East Berlin and then make it to the US controlled west before he's caught and shot on the spot by the KBG as a US spy.Just when you, and Boris, think that it's all over it's then when the action really starts with Boris on the run all over the communist controlled city trying to make it back to West Berlin and both safety and freedom. Doing a James Bond bit three years before James Bond was ever introduced to the movie going public Boris gets away from an East Berlin policeman shooting him dead with a secret cyanide dart gun and then crosses back into West Berlin only to find out that the East Berlin secret police are there waiting for him.The ending was just too much to take with Boris running around handcuffed being chased by communist agents in the middle of US controlled West Berlin with not a single US, as well as West German, soldier or police official coming to his aid. Unbelievable and outlandish shoot-out, again with on one in the city coming to their aid, at the CIB headquarters with Boris taking matters into his own hand by cold cocking the chief communist agent with his handcuffs; this after Avery and his fellow CIB agents ended up getting shot and killed by the communist agents.Boris by getting the names and addresses, that he kept only in his head, of thousands of Soviet agents all over the United States wrecks the entire Soviet spying network that it's so painfully nurtured over the last fifteen years. In the end Boris get a commendation for his services from the US congress and his involvement with the Soviet Union is forgotten about since he did it to help his family members not the Soviets. As for Boris' bothers back in the USSR it's fond out, from pop Mitrov himself, that they actually died in a Siberian prison camp and were being used, in Boris being told that they were alive, by Col.Kubelov to keep Boris in line and under the KGB's and Soviets control.

Had no idea if I was going to enjoy this film from 1960, but I had a good idea that Ernest Borgniine, ( Boris Mitrov) would put his heart and soul into his role and he did just that through out the entire film. This was a true story concerning a man who was called Borris Morras, and in this picture was called Boris Mitrov a double agent between the United States and Russia during the Cold War Era. Boris Mitrov is a successful Hollywood producer who was born in Russia and got himself involved with Russian Spys who were willing to bring his father and brothers back from Russia to his home in Los Angeles. However, Boris Mitrov is being watched by our Government Agents and they decided to enlist Boris to become a double agent for the United States in order to be cleared of the charges for espionage against the U.S. There is plenty of suspense and this story takes many twists and turns.

Ernest Borgnine is the "Man on a String" spy who is persuaded to work for the Central Bureau of Intelligence (which is supposed to be the CIA, of course). He is a movie producer, and is relocated to Berlin, to be close to the Communist enemies. The actors read their lines like they're bored to death. Mr. Borgnine sets the tone - his dialog is mostly, monotone, soft-spoken, and emotionless. Maybe this is how you are supposed to play a Russian spy? A narration relentlessly punctuates the drama with a mostly, monotone, soft-spoken, and emotionless off-screen explanation of the unfolding on-screen events. It also makes sure we viewers know Communists are very bad people.Kerwin Mathews plays the friend and partner spy. He has more expression, and tries to liven Borgnine and the others up; but they doggedly resist. Mr. Mathews' performance is not bad, and I wondered, in his scenes with Borgnine, if Mathews was wondering: what happened to the great actor from "Marty" and "From Here to Eternity"? *** Man on a String (1960) Andre De Toth ~ Ernest Borgnine, Kerwin Mathews, Colleen Dewhurst

Ernest Borgnine, now almost 90 years of age and still acting for Hollywood, went in 1960 to Berlin to play the main character called Boris Mitrov in an east - west drama of director André de Thoth called Man On The String. He is the man on the (black and white) run for cover through east Berlin before the great Wall was built and Kennedy named himself a Berliner. Borgnine has learned in Moscow the names of American spies in the states; he memorizes them and is picked up by a friendly helper next to the American sector and is taken in a nice Mercedes sedan car back to Uncle Sams sector where he spills the beans. Not much later Billy Wilder went to Berlin as well an made a great comedy about Coca Cola and the rest of the world. De Thoth picture isn't funny at all and actually the time before and after the making of the big Wall was not to laugh at. So director de Thoth decided to play the semi documentary card and one must say he succeeded in giving an impression of the area around the Brandenburg Gate and the nowhere land that is today called again Pariser Platz. So the artwork he took straight from the streets and ruins of cause of the western sectors. 15 years after the war quite some parts of West Berlin still looked pretty far from nowadays and were well to use as action areas suggesting the Hollywood staff had permission to film beyond the American sector right in the middle of East Berlin.Borgnine is an unusual type of spy and he decorates the scenes in the Moscow offices of the soviet secret service fairly well. Of cause he is not Paul Newman who is also a spy memorizing a secret formula in the Torn Curtain of Mr. Hitchcock a little later but not a bad alternative.The area next to the reborn American embassy and also not far from the Russian embassy was in the meantime nicely swept and one would need skilled optical and digital works to bring back an image of the invisible iron curtain of 1960. Spy games of the old fashion type are presently not fashionable, spy games star no more Borgnine but Redford and Pitt and are placed in the near east in colour and scope. I am beginning to like Borgnine in his black suit tumbling over the ruins of Berlin and showing his life long gap between teeth.