The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

Based on the classic John Le Carre novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold strikes me as perhaps the first major feature film taking an overtly cynical posture on the way intelligence agencies on both sides of the iron curtain did business. In 1965, released amidst the massive success of the first James Bond movies and just before the anti-war movement went mainstream, the film’s attitude and low tech approach–it was one of the last major releases shot in black and white–didn’t go over well and the film pretty much sank from sight.

Forty years later those are no longer obstacles to appreciating the quality of the acting, direction and screenplay. Richard Burton has one of his best outings as the title character, a spy called Alec Leamas returned from a decade of service running the Berlin station, though one wonders just how difficult playing a burned out drunk was for the former Mr. Elizabeth Taylor.

Some fine supporting performances by Claire Bloom as a beautiful, naive young English communist, Cyril Cusack as Leamas’ MI-6 controller, Oskar Werner as a Jewish East German spy boss at war with Peter van Eyck, his anti-semitic boss, and Beatrix Lehmann as the stern chief of the tribunal where Leamas and the two East German spies face off.

Martin Ritt, who also directed such classics as Woody Allen’s The Front, Sounder, a couple of Paul Newman hits (Hud and The Long, Hot Summer) and Norma Rae, has his A game on Cold, using lighting as a powerful tool to convey emotions and framing shots precisely to help viewers see beneath the dialog. The script by Guy Trosper (Jailhouse Rock and Birdman of Alcatraz) and Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, the second Bond movie), who came on to finish it when Trosper passed away, does very well in getting the meat of Le Carre’s novel on screen with some very crisp dialog and plot construction.

Le Carre is the pen name of David Cornwell, a real life an MI-6 spy. He was still active when this movie was made but shortly thereafter left the agency as one of the dozens of western agents betrayed to the Soviets by Kim Philby; one expects he’d have not stayed much longer in any case as his literary star bloomed. Many Le Carre novels have been made into acclaimed films and mini-series, including his best known work Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy starring Alec Guinness, The Little Drummer Girl with Diane Keaton and ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan starrer The Tailor of Panama as well as the 2005 critical favorite Constant Gardener.

recommended

Source: http://billsaysthis.com/movies/2007/09/the-spy-who-came-in-from-the-cold