The Spy Who Came
in From the Cold
Director: Martin Ritt
Year:
1965
Rating: 8.0
This was one of the first great cynical jaundiced cold war spy films that
gives you a cold splash of realism against your face. Nothing like James
Bond or Flint or any of the other spies being portrayed on screen. As Leamas
says near the end "What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers
measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're
not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men,
drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and
Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like
monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? " The film is slow and thoughtful
as the pieces fall together. An operation against an East German top spy
in which sacrifices are made like pawns on a chessboard. It is one of Burton's
best performances.
The author of the 1963 book is of course John Le Carre - his third book while
he was still working for the British MI6. The success of this book allowed
him to quit and devote his time to writing. His first two books interestingly
center around George Smiley, but though Smiley is a spy the books are more
mysteries than spy novels - both quite slender and good. In The Spy Who Came
in from the Cold Smiley plays a peripheral role as he did in the 1965 The
Looking Glass War (made into a film in 1970). It wasn't until the 1970's
when Smiley became an iconic figure with the Karla Trilogy. Smiley sort of
disappeared after that other than showing up in the 1990 The Secret Pilgrim.
But now Smiley is back again. I have begun reading Le Carre's latest novel
A Legacy of Spies in which the current heads of The Circus are investigating
what went wrong in the operation that took place in The Spy who Came in from
the Cold and so far it is brilliant - but I needed a refresher course of
that operation and since the last time I watched this was at least 30 years
ago I dragged it out like a disheveled spy from a jail cell and watched it
again. Glad I did.
