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lemmylermontov wrote:Dear Yojimbo I think the interview with LeCarré in the Criterion and TTSS it's the same BBC program

ta, Lemmy

Thanks for the thorough review, zedz! I'd been holding off as I already had the old R1, but now I'll *have* to get this. I've been on a cold war spy film kick lately. Huston's The Kremlin Letter, Masumura's Nakano Spy School, A Dandy in Aspic, de Toth's Two Headed Spy (though a WWII period film, I think it has more of a cold war feel) and Man on a String, plus the Deighton / Caine films deserve mention again here. Compared to other films in the genre I like, The Spy Who... is at the top. It certainly looks the best and Burton is a great choice for a spy (though he plays Smiley a bit too broody, I think).

All the BBC le Carre stuff is excellent, especially the first Guiness / Smiley mini-series Tinker, Tailor, but also the '87 A Perfect Spy, which is more a psychological character study than cloak and dagger, but fantastic at showing the making of a spy in a way you don't see anywhere else. Ray McAnally was born to play Rick Pym. I enjoyed The Deadly Affair, but while I loved Mason's sniveling yet clever Smiley and could not get enough of the jaded Simone Signoret, I felt Harriet Andersson to be out of place. Gotta love that Quincy Jones score, though! Also, despite the allure of a promising turn by Denholm Elliot, A Murder of Quality is a bore.

Steven H wrote:Thanks for the thorough review, zedz! I'd been holding off as I already had the old R1, but now I'll *have* to get this. I've been on a cold war spy film kick lately. Huston's The Kremlin Letter, Masumura's Nakano Spy School, A Dandy in Aspic, de Toth's Two Headed Spy (though a WWII period film, I think it has more of a cold war feel) and Man on a String, plus the Deighton / Caine films deserve mention again here. Compared to other films in the genre I like, The Spy Who... is at the top. It certainly looks the best and Burton is a great choice for a spy (though he plays Smiley a bit too broody, I think).

All the BBC le Carre stuff is excellent, especially the first Guiness / Smiley mini-series Tinker, Tailor, but also the '87 A Perfect Spy, which is more a psychological character study than cloak and dagger, but fantastic at showing the making of a spy in a way you don't see anywhere else. Ray McAnally was born to play the creepy stiff-lipped Magnus Pym. I enjoyed The Deadly Affair, but while I loved Mason's sniveling yet clever Smiley and could not get enough of the jaded Simone Signoret, I felt Harriet Andersson to be out of place. Gotta love that Quincy Jones score, though! Also, despite the allure of a promising turn by Denholm Elliot, A Murder of Quality is a bore.

speaking of Ray McNally, he was the adjudicator for my public speaking debut as a wee lad in my home town, over 40 years ago: as I recall he was very generous in his praise
(I later met him when I was doing a job at the Abbey Theatre, but he didn't remember me!)

He was brilliant in 'A Very British Coup', perhaps his finest hour.

And I seem to recall an excellent audio dramatisation of 'A Perfect Spy' on BBC World Service in the late 80s

Steven H wrote: Compared to other films in the genre I like, The Spy Who... is at the top. It certainly looks the best and Burton is a great choice for a spy (though he plays Smiley a bit too broody, I think).

While George Smiley does make a brief appearance in TSWCIFTC, he is not played by Richard Burton.

Matango wrote:While George Smiley does make a brief appearance in TSWCIFTC, he is not played by Richard Burton.

Thanks, my stupid mistake.

I'm about to watch this for the first time, primarily because of Claire Bloom, who I admired in the BBC television adaptation of Cymbeline. She creates memorable characters through her use of language. It's no easy feat. Her contemporary work is almost unknown to me, though, so I'm anxious to see how she - and Burton - fare with this.

Burton and Bloom are excellent in this, but for me Oskar Werner is the real star. His performance is superb.

The Le Carre interview is superb; unusually candid and articulate (for this format). I've always passed by le Carre's books but I may pick up one or two the reduced hardcovers at my local B&N.

He's a really great writer. I haven't seen any of the adaptations to his work, but the books themselves are the perfect antidote to the mythologizing that Fleming did.

I'm a huge snob when it comes to genre fiction and I really liked reading "The Spy..." Very much in the vein of some of Graham Greene's novels.

Not meaning Matt necessarily, but here's an example of how genre can sometimes encourage misleading assumptions. I think a lot of people (some I've talked with, at least) initially place him in the same class as Tom Clancy, but if they actually read the books find far more than they expected. I already had a fairly high opinion of him that grew considerably when I heard his interview on Democracy Now last year.

I'm gonna give this one another go. Burton's performance, which dominates the film, felt like an enormous blank the first time round. I felt like I was was watching an actor who was all nerves and a wrecked emotional center; wrecked, in the sense that Leamus (Burton) is obviously in emotional tatters but can't seem to find a way to articulate it. That first meeting with Control, for example, features Burton in one unblinking, unflinching, horrified deadpan. Despite the contrived plot Control & Co. have cooked up for him (and Control even suggests that Leamus retire to a desk job) Leamus knows that this last assignment is a death sentence. That's how Burton plays it and in so doing lets the audience know that that's what we're in for. (You can argue the point but it's quickly clear that this character is street smart, can smell blood and will have no ally. This prospect, though not spoken, but certainly imtimated, is the real intrigue for me.)

I'm afraid, however, that Burton (nor Ritt) is able to find a way to capitalize on this. Despite all the Cold War intrigue the trajectory of Burton's emotional life is the center of the film - there's no way to avoid it - dominates the film. When Nan Perry (Clair Bloom) whispers, "George Smiley" to the tribunal she not only reveals Leamus' identity on a professional level but she reveals the poignancy of their emotional bond as well. Then, Leamus, though trapped, at least has a confessed ally. Knowing this the ending makes perfect sense and is a kind of redemptive gesture. But we really don't know what he's going through on an emotional level along the way despite the occasional outburst or temper flare-up. Burton is buried in inner turmoil so deep that we can't read it. That's death for an actor and death for a picture. Pardon the reference, but Liz nailed it when she (as Martha) tags him Swampy in Albee/Nichol's Virginia Woolf. Of course, there, the jibe was directed at Burton as George but it could be applied here as well. The guy is impregnable. There's obviously a lot going on but it's indecipherable. In terms of the character, I suppose his emotional muteness makes sense. But for the audience (this audience, anyway) it's like watching a swelling dam that never breaks. We get a release, finally, in the Nichols' film but, regrettably, it never happens in The Spy.

Financial Times - "The coat worn by Richard Burton in ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ represents the mood of an era."

Coming to Blu

After the disappointment of Seconds, I watched this. Initially, I was thinking this was another disappointment, another genre piece I wouldn't connect to, then everything changed, Burton's character arrived in Holland, met Werner and the film began to explode into excellence. their long dialogue scenes together full of subtle feints and restrained acting more than redeemed the more haphazard England-based Act 1. When the film unexpectedly (to me, at least, since I didn't totally get where it was going until Mundt showed up when the whole machinations of the film suddenly transfigured into delicious) veered into the courtroom Act 3 I was thoroughly floored.

this film uses the genre to undermine the genre, attacking the usual rah rah attitude of spy films Here we have a spy film that manages to thread the needle between sympathizing with communism and capitalism simultaneously, by the stunning end of the film, you realize we've been subjected to an impressive critique of the cold war and the accompanying mindsets on both sides. Just brilliant across the board. The ending is especially scathing towards both powers that be.

Perhaps the only thing I disliked was the theatrical broadness of Burton's England scenes (which works, considering the later revelations we encounter) and some of his more explosive line readings don't work as well as his more restrained moments, in part because when Burton is yelling it tends to cause the dialogue to stop working, making it come off as more didactic and on-the-nose.

Ritt is a seriously underrated director, and I'm surprised I never got around to this before, but it's up there with Norma Rae for his best work. this made me want to rewatch Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I think that one is not quite as good as this film, though it is nearly its equal.

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In case anyone wants to take Spy with them or if you can't get to a Criterion copy right away The Internet Archive has this film available in several formats. I've found this mp4 the niftiest.

Watching this one again I'm still puzzled by the desperado attempting to cross the iron curtain on a bicycle near the start of the film. The set-up with Richard Burton anticipating the attempt has all the requisite stilled tension we've come to expect from Cold War thrillers. But once the attempt is discovered and the sirens blare we get an extended long shot of a clumbsy lone cyclist who can barely stay on the bike, much less elude the formidable security forces. It would be comic in other hands but Ritt manages to make the moment rather pitiful. The moment, of course, foreshadows the film's conclusion, but what is Ritt actually pre-staging in the way of theme? Or in the way of character? Is it Burton's preview of what will befall him in tone and consequence?

Well, it's all of that. But it's also just the reality of that world. That what they are doing is incredibly dangerous, and often almost exclusively to the lowly recruited agents, not usually the case officers running them. It doesn't seem so much clumsy to me as frantic -- what choice did the guy have once he'd been outed as suspicious? If he'd stood down, he knew that what awaited him would be prolonged torture and a death sentence or decades in prison at best. Making a run for it was pretty much his only option and one that sometimes worked. Which is why the opening also seems pretty accurate to the hair-trigger tensions at border crossings in Berlin generally around that time. This is the way it was for everyone there at every moment, where a hot shooting was was in near constant danger of erupting out of the uneasy stalemate of the Cold War.

Ah, so the observation (the inadequacy of the tools in the hands of lowly agents against the two behemoth powers) is one of absurdity. I'd always allied the absurd with the comic. But there's nothing comic here, except in retrospect. Burton, almost always deadly serious, is also always on the brink of exploding into laughter. And it's precisely due to his own personal intensity and these absurd situations. I can't remember if it happens in this film (Ritt is clearly no satirist) but I certainly look forward to it.

I'm assuming we're not worried about spoilers, since every ought to have seen this before coming in, right?

One of the fascinating themes about the movie, and one that's easy to forget, is essentially that WWII never ended- and we're not necessarily on the right side anymore. Oskar Werner's performance is remarkable in that respect, since he takes a man who openly discussing blowing up a café full of innocents to get a target (and with a certain pleased gleam in his eye, no less) who is nonetheless one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie, and one whom really wishes to see vindicated. Peter van Eyck's job is less complex, but he (whom I normally find a fairly mediocre actor) pulls off a character who must be hateful without ever saying a word, nor show open cruelty or hatred- there's something about his composed expression that seems savage, and horrible.

The crowning ambiguity of the movie- the question of on whose orders Claire Bloom is shot- is one that easily bests Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for nihilistic gloom, and indeed, this movie rather darkens the hero of that narrative. I'm always impressed at how even handed this is in its portrayal of the USSR and its tactics, too- it makes no effort to deny their brutality, but reminds one that this brutality was fully mutual, and makes no real effort to portray them as worse in any meaningful way. The key imagery, I think, is that of the two tractor trailers bearing down on the station wagon, as described by Burton- the character of the drivers and what they're hauling is irrelevant to the problem at hand.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I'm assuming we're not worried about spoilers, since every ought to have seen this before coming in, right?

Of course. There can be no mistaking these threads for anything except discussions about the films alone. No one should have any reasonable expectation to avoid spoilers; these threads could hardly exist without them.

matrixschmatrix wrote:...WWII never ended- and we're not necessarily on the right side anymore.

Not sure what you mean by this. Moral ambiguity of Cold War espionage aside, it's hard to conceive of a way in which the Stasi are somehow morally superior to the Nazis. By the way, anybody who goes to Berlin and is remotely interested in the history but doesn't take a tour of Hohenschönhausen prison (the one in The Lives of Others) -- lead by one of the former inmates if you're lucky -- is missing one of the best chances you'll ever have to get a real feeling for what it was like to live in a police state.

matrixschmatrix wrote: I'm always impressed at how even handed this is in its portrayal of the USSR and its tactics, too- it makes no effort to deny their brutality, but reminds one that this brutality was fully mutual, and makes no real effort to portray them as worse in any meaningful way.

I haven't had time yet to reread the book or rewatch the film, which I fully intend to do in the next week or so. It's a question of emphasis, but I would would phrase that a little differently, especially with regards to the novel. And even with respect to what many feel is the more cynical take on espionage in Tinker Tailor. Where Le Carre saw the two sides as equal was more in their general willingness to exploit all of the little people the powers that be were using as pawns in their spy games. But I do think he saw a clear difference behind the ideologies of the West and the East and between some of their methods. The best example of this that springs to mind in all of his work is the moment in the film of Tinker Tailor where Jim Prideaux

Spoiler

sits in a KGB prison watching his lover be summarily executed at point blank range in front of him.

It's not like the West doesn't have plenty of Cold War blood on its hands, just that, by comparison, existence seems especially arbitrary and life shockingly cheap under the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet system and its communist satellites.

Ok, while there should be no expectation for remaining spoiler-free in regard to this film, that doesn't mean you should be spoiling the ending to every film. Normal spoiler-tagging etiquette should apply for any film not directly under discussion.

In saying that WWII never ended and that I'm not sure the movie implies we were on the right side, I was referring to the fact that the whole plot of the movie is to set up a man who is essentially a Nazi, executing Jews. That pallor hangs over the last half hour or so of the movie terribly, and it's pretty shocking as something coming from a former British agent. Beyond that, I'm not terribly interested in getting into an overall discussion of the relative morality of East and West- it's a subject that's largely outside the scope of the movie's concerns, and one that in my experience is rarely productive. Let's keep it at that I admire the degree to which this movie is not interested in lionizing or defending the means used by the West in any way, even relative to those used by the East.

matrixschmatrix wrote:The crowning ambiguity of the movie- the question of on whose orders Claire Bloom is shot- is one that easily bests Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for nihilistic gloom, and indeed, this movie rather darkens the hero of that narrative.

Yes, Tinker, Taylor was the immediate film corollary for me (though it would be interesting to hear other immediate associations) but you don't need to get that far in the narrative for nihilistic hubris. Burton's beat down of the grocer for no discernable reason provided by the narrative (other than temporary improvidence) is an awfully dark turn. Nothing Burton does in the first 15 minutes pre-stages that action. So, right off, we're dealing with a character we can't trust; but, primarily, because we aren't privvy to his inner life. It's one of the aspects of the film which has always bugged me - and why I, even on an unconscious level, search for clues which would shed some light on his behavior. Would that be beyond the scope of the Le Carré novel or the film? And if not, what clues are there in the visual narrative that would lead us to make the kind of judgements about Burton's character the way that he does about nearly evey player in the film? And if we can't do what he does and we're not given access to his emotional life with whom are we supposed to symphathize?