Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

mike dewey Very entertaining late 60's Cold War romp through Britain and Germany. Excellent realism (Russian agent heroin user who longs for home simultaneously with the next hit!) and Laurence Harvey's cold, matter-of-fact demeanor as the disgruntled agent who is pretty much fed up with the whole political spy scene. He turned out to be a super choice for this role!Also, Mia Farrow is excellent as the ditsy, naive "bird" who takes a fancy to LH's counterpoint character. But the real kudos go to Peter Cook, the mod devil-may-care chap who supplies to LH all the pertinent spy goings-on with a mordant, off-color humorous style. (Note his playboy flirtations juxtaposed with his serious delineations of Home Office tidbits to LH at the penthouse tower bar in Germany.) Lionel Stander gets in a good dry line or two as a Russian agent who confronts LH in Germany. Quincy Jones gets my musical kudos for the tasteful soundtrack! Finally, the ending is also tastefully done, all too apropos for LH's downward spiraling lifestyle.

MrOllie It was somewhat of a feature of the late 1960s to make bleak and world weary spy movies. This film is in this mould. I saw the film upon it's release and quite enjoyed it, albeit it is slow and a little dull. Still, I think that it is an interesting piece of film making and enjoyed the performances of Laurence Harvey and Tom Courtenay who play British agents who do not like each other. (Harvey is in fact a double agent). There are some good locations shots of 1960's London (mainly bleak) and Berlin (not so bleak). Harvey trudges around both capitals after been given an assignment to kill a Russian Spy - who is in fact himself. Mia Farrow is a trendy young thing (tho' a bit on the thin side)and adds love interest. However, as she keeps turning up wherever Harvey goes, is she as innocent as she appears? A young Peter Cook also stars as a rather irritating junior British agent. John Bird and Lionel Stander add a little humour into an otherwise humourless film. Definitely worth a look.

dbdumonteil This is the last movie by a man who gave some of the best westerns ever made.After "Cimarron" (1960) ,he went to make epics ,the first of which ("El Cid" ) stands as his most sustained work in the sixties."A dandy in aspic" ,which was finished by his star,looks like a cross between "the Manchourian candidate " (which Laurence Harvey's presence reinforces) and "the spy who came in from the cold" ,with a dash of Jorge Luis Borges thrown in for good measure It's not as bad as its reputation.First the dance of the puppet ,during the cast and credits ,is worthy of Saul Bass (the puppet comes back at the end).Then the movie,entirely filmed on location,takes us to the wharfs of London and to Berlin at the time of the Wall.Like many works of the era ,it deals with cold war and is not worse than most of them.Nothing from James Bond,except maybe the scene with Harvey's secretary ,but it's not Moneypenny.A threatening world where men are only pawns in a game,or puppets in the hands of a string man we never see .The best moment is probably the automatic photo booth ,a scene which has been imitated since.SPOILER Unfortunately ,the part of Caroline (Mia Farrow) gets in the way.As soon as he's in Berlin,Eberlin meets her and we may think that the character bears some relation with the plot.But her presence is purely decorative and as Tom Courtenay says :"You've got no past and he's got no future" .

moonspinner55 Laurence Harvey plays a Russian-born spy based in London who is now working for both countries as a double-agent; he's assigned by the British to kill his alter-ego, and hopes to find a target to assume his alias. Opening with a wonderful credits sequence, "A Dandy in Aspic" looks initially to be an enjoyably old-fashioned Cold War excursion with such familiar elements as CIA operatives and the KGB. Unfortunately, though screenwriter Derek Marlowe adapted his own novel, the key ingredients of such a spy-drama appear to have gone missing; the film is all talky exposition and little pay-off. Mia Farrow continually pops up unannounced as Harvey's love-interest, probably in the faint hope we'll assume she's sneakily involved somehow. There are so many camera set-ups, verboten conversations, and obtuse face-offs that the overall effect is both exhausting and stultifying. Harvey took over the direction of the film after original director-producer Anthony Mann passed away unexpectedly. This must account for the funereal pacing and the cloudy character interaction, though the plot itself wasn't exactly timely--not even for 1968. Farrow (just prior to "Rosemary's Baby") adds quite a bit of gamine magic to the proceedings as an amateur photographer who appears to be following Harvey wherever he goes; it isn't much of a role, but Mia's beauty and youthful charm go a long way towards making the picture tolerable. Other assets: Quincy Jones' low-keyed score and the fine cinematography by Christopher Challis and Austin Dempster. ** from ****