283 - The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, United Kingdom, 1965. Dir. Martin Ritt.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

283 - The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, United Kingdom, 1965.  Dir. Martin Ritt.

Ian Fleming had published ten James Bond novels by the time John le Carre published his first spy novel.  The public's appetite by now was exceedingly strong.  Fleming had been a real spy, or "naval intelligence officer," and had worked on a real project called Operation Goldeneye.  When he published his first novel, Casino Royale in 1952, it was an immediate success, and Fleming went on to be one of the best-selling authors of all time, his books selling more than 100 million copies.

While Fleming worked for Naval Intelligence, he made his hero, James Bond, a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.  John le Carre, meanwhile, really did work for the Secret Intelligence Service as a real spy for MI6.

We did not get into it in our write-up of Carol Reed's masterpiece The Third Man, but Graham Greene the screenwriter had also been a member of MI6 and had suspected a fellow agent, Kim Philby, of being a secret agent for the Soviets, a member of the Cambridge Five, and the real Third Man.  Philby had been Greene's supervisor at MI6.  Greene wrote the screenplay for The Third Man in 1949, but Philby would not be found out until 1963.  Back in 1949 it was still premonitions and speculation.

le Carre published his third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in 1963, and its success enabled him to leave MI6 and become a full-time novelist.  He needed to leave anyway, as Philby betrayed le Carre to the Soviets.  le Carre later modeled his villain after Philby in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974).

Consider, then, that Kim Philby's life, work, and treason influenced the writing of at least two novels by at least two fellow MI6 operatives twenty-five years apart.

Alec Leamas is a different kind of spy than James Bond, and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a different kind of movie.  Not that James Bond was always focused on sex, gambling, shaken-not-stirred vodka martinis, high-tech gadgetry, and tongue-in-cheek innuendo.  At least the first one, Dr. No, was a straightforward, sincere action thriller, with Sean Connery playing the role as a flawed man sincerely doing a job he happened to be good at doing.  But this one is quite different.

For one, it is filmed in black and white.  Two, it is mostly a drama, with a steady, deliberate pace that follows the sober work of an unsober man on the back end of his career.  Three, it is quite serious, never exotic, never sexy, never portraying spy work as attractive.  Rather, it shows the seedy side, the moral compromises, and the absolute need for the ends to justify the means in order to carry out one's mission.  As Control explains to Alec, "You can't be less wicked than your enemies simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you?"

But the film is quite delicious in its dramatic tension.  It has more twists than a Chubby Checker record, and the viewer is never quite sure who is on which side.  Richard Burton plays Alec Leamas with bone fatigue and a constant need for a stiff drink.  But is this Alec Leamas?  Or is it Alec Leamas as he portrays himself at his job?  Or is it Alec Leamas doing his job as he portrays himself to others as a defector?  Or is it Richard Burton?

Regardless, it is a fine performance, and if you only know Richard Burton as a name, or as Elizabeth Taylor's once and future husband, or from his other three marriages, or as a drunkard, or from something like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) or The Taming of the Shrew (1967), you may be delightfully surprised to see what a strong actor he is.  And here he is, right in the middle of his career, with 16 years behind him and 19 years to go, from 1949's Now Barabbas to 1984's 1984.  This is the man who gave us the English New Wave with Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger (1959), and who played Hamlet in 1964 (co-directed by John Gielgud himself!).  Burton also played Americans, from The Night of the Iguana (1964) to The Klansman (1974).  Juicy.

I do not want to say much about the plot here, because the plot here is vital.

But I do want to suggest that I believe both le Carre in the novel and Martin Ritt in the film flinched with the ending.  It is an hour and forty-five minutes of a good thriller followed by seven minutes of heavy-handed moralizing.  Burton has to make one of those long speeches that were so popular back then--such as the one Spencer Tracy makes at the end of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?, where the one bigot in the movie lectures all the tolerant people in the end just because he is the star--where Leamas has to undermine everything he has ever done in order to convince the viewer he has morals.

As if serving your country is not moral.

As if a secret agent's getting his hands dirty in order to protect innocent people is not moral.

For me they did not follow through with the narrative logic of the story.

They flinched.

But then I feel that way about several movies that place quitting on a pedestal as if it were a virtue--from High Noon to Dirty Harry to The Devil Wears Prada (all movies I really like otherwise).  "Look at me.  I quit.  I hereby throw my badge or my cellphone into the water.  See how noble I am!"  Maybe.  Or maybe you just quit and someone else will take your place and do your job and you will do something else with your life and the world will go on.

It would have been more powerful if Leamas had done what one would have expected Leamas to have done.

He comes in from the cold.

Whereas, I share the sentiments of Control:

"I want you to stay out in the cold.  A little longer."

That would have been more satisfying.

And it also would have been more truthful.