I first saw this during a season on programme on Channel 4 in the UK called "TV Heaven", in the 1967 week. As the previous comment states, it was a very melancholy drama, but brilliantly played out by James Mason and Hugh Griffith as the downtrodden son and domineering father respectively.
Mason's character had decided to head to West Berlin just prior to the Wall, and his father had remained in the Eastern Sector. Word gets to him that his father has died, and he is to travel to the East to collect the body for burial, only to discover that his father is alive and well and as cantankerous as ever! Deceived by his father and coerced by a local woman he falls for, the son is convinced to take him back across the border to West Berlin in the casket, under the impression that the father wants to spend his remaining days in "freedom" - but a terrible decision at the border means that the one person he comes to love comes to an unpleasant end....
With the amount of "classic" TV that is available on DVD nowadays, what's to stop them releasing this?
Mason's character had decided to head to West Berlin just prior to the Wall, and his father had remained in the Eastern Sector. Word gets to him that his father has died, and he is to travel to the East to collect the body for burial, only to discover that his father is alive and well and as cantankerous as ever! Deceived by his father and coerced by a local woman he falls for, the son is convinced to take him back across the border to West Berlin in the casket, under the impression that the father wants to spend his remaining days in "freedom" - but a terrible decision at the border means that the one person he comes to love comes to an unpleasant end....
With the amount of "classic" TV that is available on DVD nowadays, what's to stop them releasing this?