FILM · 1966 · FRANCE
L'espion
19 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (19)
- #001
Montgomery Clift accepted this film only so that he could later make Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). After his death, the role passed to Marlon Brando.
- #002
Despite his poor health, Clift insisted on performing all of his own stunts in this film.
- #003
Montgomery Clift died less than three months after the completion of this film.
- #004
The leads of this film are entirely cosmopolitan: Montgomery Clift is American, Hardy Krüger is German and Roddy McDowall is English, while the film is directed by the Belgian Raoul Lévy.
- #005
This was the last film directed by Raoul Lévy, who committed suicide six months after its release.
- #006
This film was made and released about three years after the first publication in 1963 of Paul Thomas's source novel 'The Spy' (aka 'L'Espion'). It is the only film adapted from one of his stories. The film was released in France under the title L'Espion.
- #007
This was the first major English-language role for the Morocco-born actress Macha Méril.
- #008
This film has generally been seen as a poor way to end Montgomery Clift's screen career. In Britain it was (occasionally) shown as a B movie cut down from its original 101 minutes to only 68 minutes. The few reviews it received all complained of incoherence and incomprehensibility.
- #009
Monica Vitti was initially announced for the lead role.
- #010
Although this is a French production, it was in fact shot entirely in Germany.
- #011
The German actor Hardy Krüger plays the East German agent and intelligence adviser Peter Heinzmann.
- #012
Leslie Caron was initially cast in the female lead but left the production shortly before shooting began. Macha Méril took over the role.
- #013
It was shot mostly in Munich, then in West Germany. The film is set in Leipzig, which at the time lay in Communist East Germany. Reaching there would have been impossible at the time because of the repressive regime.
- #014
In many scenes without Montgomery Clift, the German actors' lips say words different from what is heard. These lines are clearly dubbed, but the leading German characters are dubbed by the same actors.
- #015
The vehicle Frieda uses to smuggle Bower out of East Germany is an East German-built 1962 Barkas B1000 KA. Peter pursues Bower in a West German-built 1960 Opel Rekord P1.
- #016
The red sports car Bower drives into East Germany is a rare Porsche 911 built in early 1964. In good condition, this car could be worth $500,000 or more at auction in 2019.
- #017
At the beginning, the clerk in the hotel lobby has a "Glasgow Smile", but it is visible only on the left side.
- #018
The film's original title, L'espion, means "The Spy" in French, which actually suits the film better than The Defector. Montgomery Clift's character visits East Germany as a spy; he does not defect.
- #019
It is one of the few Warner Archives DVDs that still retains its original blue cover; here only a portion of the artwork appears in a square in the middle of what appears to surround the "blue marble"; most original blue-cover DVDs were repackaged so that the original poster image covers the whole box (and since blue boxes were abandoned by Warner, new DVDs have been like that from the start).
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