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Sadly Over-hyped

A Disappointing Continuation

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

I admit, I have always been fascinated by the Eurospy genre, I grew up with Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill(1966) and Kommissar X - Drei grüne Hunde(1967) with Tony Kendall and Brad Harris, Deadlier Than the Male(1967) with Richard Johnson, Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina, The Viscount (1967)Le Vicomte règle ses comptes(original title) with Kerwin Mathews, Coplan prend des Risques(1964) with Dominique Paturel and Virna Lisi, Me faire ça à moi(1961) with Eddie Constantine, Special Mission Lady Chaplin(1966) with Daniela Bianchi and Ken Clark. The same Ken Clark is in Tiffany Memorandum. The best thing in the film is the music of talented Riz Ortolani, in the style of Lalo Schifrin. Then the professional cinematography by Stelvio Massi, later in the '70s, the director of some Italian thrillers. That's all. The story, well, we don't have one, the actors are not really actors, the film is poor, worthy to be seen only by hardcore fans of the genre.

Neither Ken Clark nor Irina Demick is great , but as they are not asked too much,they do nicely in their parts of a journalist (?) and a secretary (?)."Tiffany Memorandum" is certainly the best of all Ken Clark's spy thrillers ;not that the screenplay is particularly original.It must be the direction.The obscure director (at least to my knowledge) shows sometimes something of Mario Bava's talent .Some scenes are remarkable ,with an unusually inventive sense of space :the clockmaker's workshop with its insistent ticking,the ending in the radio studio with the killer in the place and on the screen (the trick which would be also used in "targets" feat Boris Karloff (Bogdanovitch ,1968)).If you should see one of Dick's adventures,this is definitely the one to choose.You can do without the other sub-James Bond flicks.

Director Grieco is perhaps best-known for his very last film, the poliziottesco BEAST WITH A GUN (1977), which I own but have yet to watch; however, his earlier career saw him cut his teeth on peplums (I have just recorded his JULIUS CAESAR AGAINST THE PIRATES [1964]!) and espionage stuff (such as the film under review) – but he also helmed an enjoyable superhero flick, FANTASTIC ARGOMAN (1967; which I own, have watched and even reviewed here sometime back), not to mention a Nunsploitationer i.e. THE SINFUL NUNS OF ST. VALENTINE (1974), which I am definitely interested in. Anyway, to get to the matter at hand, this typically convoluted spy thriller is not too bad as these things go; for the record, I had watched Grieco's two Agent 077 efforts and also have PASSWORD: KILL AGENT GORDON (1966; starring ARGOMAN's Roger Browne) in my "To Watch" pile. Incidentally, the male lead of TIFFANY MEMORANDUM (the title being clearly inspired by the star-studded THE QUILLER MEMORANDUM [1966]) is the somewhat beefy and incredibly hirsute(!) Ken Clark – with whom I was mainly familiar through two Mario Bava Westerns – as an American reporter involved in international intrigue in Paris and Berlin; as such, he makes for an adequate protagonist of the lock-jawed variety and who, needless to say, proves irresistible to women throughout (namely heroine Irina Demick and villainess Loredana Nusciak). After four days, the plot of this one has already virtually faded from my memory: I know there's an assassination of a politician, a train wreck, a scene in a casino (the most obvious nod here to the James Bond extravaganzas) and a climax at some factory; an interesting element sees several characters being revealed to be the opposite of what they are: the politician's chauffeur – played by "Euro-Cult" regular Angelo Infanti – betrays him to his rivals (though, not being aware of his identity, the latter take Clark to be him!), the man who passes himself off as would-be criminal mastermind "The Shadow" (actually Hollywood veteran Gregoire Aslan) is really a C.I.A. operative, the cop who ostensibly aids the hero in his investigation is really the politician's murderer, etc. In the end, the film's main asset comes down to Riz Ortolani's lively score which, along with the location shooting and occasional action sequence, is very much par for the course with this type of fare.

While not the best of Ken Clark's spy adventures, Tiffany Memorandum is by no means the bottom of the lot. It has a great score by Riz Ortolani, some good locations in Paris and Berlin, lots of exciting fisticuffs, and death by clock. TM's main failing is the complicated and not very exciting plot. There are so many twists and false identities that it is sometimes hard to tell who is doing what and to whom.This time, according to the English-dubbed print anyway, Ken is Dick Hallan, a journalist for the Herald-Tribune. He gets mixed up in international politics through a series of incredible coincidences and is finally coerced by the CIA (not really) to follow the intrigue to its unremarkable end.This one's for fans of big Ken and I know you're out there.