The Assassination Bureau

United Kingdom

1969

110 Min

Color

1.85:1

English, French, Italian

Currently 2.5/5 Stars.
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PROD Michael Relph, Charles Orme

SCR Michael Relph, Wolf Mankowitz, Jack London, Robert L. Fish

CAST Oliver Reed, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, Curd Jürgens, Philippe Noiret, Warren Mitchell, Beryl Reid, Clive Revill, Kenneth Griffith, Vernon Dobtcheff, Annabella Incontrera, Jess Conrad, George Coulouris, Ralph Michael, Katherine Kath, Eugene Deckers, Olaf Pooley, George Murcell, Michael Wolf, Gordon Sterne, Milton Reid, Frank Thornton

Smart period black-comedy thriller set in the Victorian era about a secret international club that eliminates those they deem unworthy. The scene is set for a cat-and-mouse chase across Europe. Post-Avengers Diana Rigg stars as the prim and proper aspiring reporter whilst Oliver Reed wonderfully portrays the bureau’s insidiously witty and debonair leader. Loosely based on a madcap unfinished novel by Jack London later completed by Robert L Fish, with additional material by producer Michael Relph and Wolf Mankowitz, the mildly funny game of cat-and-mouse across Europe is performed by an excellent cast with tongue firmly in cheek. Director Basil Dearden infuses the silly tale with lively glee and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth’s photography perfectly captures the period scenery.

Tenacious feminist journalist Miss Winter sets out to track down a society of hired killers dubbed The Assassination Bureau operating at the beginning of the 20th century. However, she’s taken aback by the smooth sophistication of the organisation’s leader Ivan Dragomiloff. She comes up with a singularly appropriate challenge for the bureau – to assassinate him. Dragomiloff, in an attempt to rejuvenate the group, challenges his assassins to target him, while he in turn will attempt to assassinate them. But events are complicated by a conniving aristocratic newspaper publisher Lord Bostwick. —Britmovie.co.uk

Director

Basil Dearden

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of… read more

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including The Goose Steps Out (1942) and My Learned Friend (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium Dead of Night (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the “Hearse Driver” segment. He also directed The Captive Heart starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The Blue Lamp (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden’s Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running Dixon of Dock Green television series. His last Ealing film, Out of the Clouds, was released in 1955.

In later years he became associated with the writer and producer Michael Relph, and the two men made films on subjects generally not tackled by British cinema in this era. These included homosexuality (Victim, 1961) and race relations (Pool of London, 1951; Sapphire, 1959). In the late 1960s Dearden also made some big-scale epics including Khartoum (1966), with Charlton Heston, and the Victorian era black comedy The Assassination Bureau (1969), again with Michael Relph.

His last film was The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) with Roger Moore, with whom he later made three episodes of the television series The Persuaders!: Overture, Powerswitch and To the Death, Baby. Dearden was killed in a car accident in 1971, in a horrific crash on the M40 near the spot where the character Harold Pelham – the Man Who Haunted Himself – is supposed to have crashed his car in the opening sequence of the film.

He had two sons, Torquil Dearden and the screenwriter and director James Dearden.

The film critic David Thomson does not hold Dearden in high regard. He writes: “[Dearden’s] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning”.

More positively, for the Australian film writer, Brian McFarlane: “Dearden’s films offer, among other rewards, a fascinating barometer of public taste at its most nearly consensual over three decades.” —Wikipedia

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