Funeral in Berlin
was the second of three films based on the Harry Palmer novels by Len Deighton. As he did in
The Ipcress File
, Michael Caine stars as Palmer, Deighton's bespectacled, somewhat disreputable British secret agent. In the manner of
Graham Greene
's
The Third Man
, Palmer is dispatched to Berlin to look into the highly suspicious defection of Soviet colonel Stok (Oscar Homolka). It is giving nothing away to reveal that Stok's death is a sham, and that Palmer is expected to engineer the "corpse"'s defection. To reveal any more, however, would be giving the game away. Michael Caine would portray Harry Palmer a third time in
Billion Dollar Brain
.