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The Secret Agent's Blunder
(Ошибка Резидента / Oshibka Rezidenta)
USSR 1968
Directed by Veniamin Dorman
Restored DVDRip
IMDB link
Click here for before / after reel
1969 USSR box office leader, 35.4 million viewers
In Russian (occasionally in translation over German) with English subtitles
Part 1: According to Old Legend (68 minutes, 1.24GB)
Part 2: Snipe’s Return (66 minutes, 1.22GB)
The KGB learns that Mikhail Tulyev (Georgiy Zhzhonov), a Western spy and the son of an exiled Russian aristocrat, has been planted in the USSR. Tulyev seeks information on a purported Soviet nuclear weapons facility while playing cat-and-mouse with KGB counterintelligence.
Rich with Cold War themes and Soviet cultural references,
The Secret Agent’s Blunder
will be enjoyed by fans of realistic espionage drama (cf. le Carré) and Sovietophiles alike.
The first installment in the Secret Agent series:
The Secret Agent’s Blunder
(1968),
The Secret Agent’s Destiny
(1970),
The Secret Agent’s Return
(1982), and
The End of Operation “Secret Agent”
(1986). Russian president Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent himself, has stated that his career as an intelligence officer was prompted in part by Zhzhonov’s performance in these films.
This version is the result of efforts to improve both the video and subtitles from the low-quality Ruscico DVD. Video has been exactingly cleaned up as follows:
- Cropped windowboxing (source DVD is overcropped on the sides, unfortunately)
- Stabilized gate weave
- Removed flickering
- Removed chroma noise (rainbowing and yellow tinting)
- Corrected / balanced levels
- Recovered details and reduced aliasing
- Cleaned noise and banding
- (See the included before / after reel and final screenshot)
Subtitles have been edited line-by-line for readability and accuracy. There are two English subtitle tracks, identical save for format:
- Default track: lower resolution IDX (VobSub) format; compatible with many standalone media players
- Secondary track: high resolution SSA format; recommended if watching on a computer
Technical details:
- B&W, 25 fps, 696x352
- (Resolution unaltered from DVD except for removal of black windowboxing)
- (Displayed at 742x352 with 1.066 PAL pixel aspect ratio)
- 48 kHz, 192 Kbps mono AC3 (unaltered DVD original)
- x264 in MKV
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