For reasons we may never know, Richard Burton did his most inspired work when cast as a suffering or doomed character in pictures such as Becket, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, and Night of the Iguana. As the burnt-out British spy, Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, his suffering practically becomes an alternate and truer language than mere speech. Burton portrays Leamas so effectively that you can't help but wonder what sort of depths within his being supply the peculiar energy needed for portrayals of this kind. His performance is so powerful that it would be wrong to say that watching him is a great pleasure; that would be like saying you enjoy the sight of a large animal slowly tearing itself to pieces before your eyes.
The film as a whole is relentlessly grim from start to finish, and is miles from James Bond territory. Not only is it shot in black and white, but there isn't a single scene blessed with sunlight. Such was director Martin Ritt's determination to create not merely a portrait of one man in his own personal hell, but to imply that under the conditions of cold war, life in western civilization is apt to be psychically deadening for all. Throughout, the condition of being almost permanently cold seems to be fundamental to Spy, so that by the time the film ends you want to consume a stiff hot drink and hug someone.
The plot is this: Leamas returns to Britain after a fatally botched operation in Berlin, shaken and despondent, but wanting to go back out into the field (probably in part to redeem himself in his own eyes). Control, the head of the spy organization, asks him to participate in a scheme to destroy Mundt, their East German enemy. Leamas's assignment is to pretend to have been thrown out of his job and appear to go completely to seed, leaving himself open to recruitment by East German agents in London, who quickly make their appearance on cue. The rest of the movie follows Leamas as he's lured by stages to East Germany, and ultimately brought to the realization that he's been nothing but a pawn used by both sides to accomplish Byzantine ends that he couldn't see coming.
What particularly intrigues me about all this is whether Leamas merely impersonates someone who goes to seed or actually does so after a lifetime of spying. Was he an alcoholic by the time he got this assignment, or was he only pretending to be? Did the strain of months of intentional impersonation as a drunken, defrocked agent unexpectedly take hold of him and hasten a downward slide? The film is never clear on this.
Aside from Burton, Spy offers a slew of notable British and German actors in supporting roles. Cyril Cusack as Leamas's chief is onscreen for only two brief periods, yet it's hard to take your eyes off this wily Irishman, so soft-spoken and detached as he calmly explains how he's going to spin his web to catch Mundt. In his quiet way, Cusack comes close to stealing the scenes he shares with Burton-an impossibility for any ordinary supporting actor. Claire Bloom plays an unmarried woman, an openly and sincerely devoted communist who befriends Leamas when he goes to work in the small library where she's employed. Michael Hordern, a British treasure, is a recruiter for the East German spy ring and makes Leamas's acquaintance when the latter finishes a brief prison term for savagely beating a grocer (in order to attract the East Germans' attention to himself). Hordern's character is a sensitive old queen, and Leamas is sarcastically contemptuous of him, making a series of cutting remarks that would not be politically correct nowadays. Oscar Werner, one of the most appealing film actors of the 20th century (Interlude, The Shoes of the Fisherman, Jules and Jim, Fahrenheit 451, Ship of Fools), gives another of his many impressive performances as a dedicated East German Communist who slowly forms a liking for Leamas; and Peter Van Eyck (whom you've seen playing Nazis in dozens of films) as his brutal superior, Mundt, is unpleasantly convincing as someone quite ready to destroy anyone standing in his way.
Spy, based on John LeCarré's first great espionage novel, is one of the most tightly constructed motion pictures I've ever seen. It doesn't have a wasted frame of film, never yields an inch nor gives the audience a break, and doesn't falter in its view of a career in espionage as damaging and inhuman. Everyone involved is exploited, corrupted, treacherous, or at least disillusioned, and the ones who aren't are usually murdered. Lies are the lingua franca of the people who populate this movie. There are no personal triumphs, not even of spirit remaining triumphant over loss, and the ending remains one of the classic downers in the history of sound films. This was a movie whose makers risked bad-mouth publicity and the loss of audiences. Executives at Paramount, the company that produced it, must have suffered night sweats before the reviews came out.
Made more than 30 years ago, the movie has lost none of its power to emotionally affect audiences. Martin Ritt, whose own career had been temporarily ruined by the Communist witch hunt during the McCarthy era, had a feeling of sympathy for doomed, burnt-out losers caught in a system or situation not (usually) of their own making, struggling to no avail, then ultimately being swallowed up or simply discarded (cf. The Great White Hope, Hud, The Front, and No Down Payment). After several years, Ritt managed to re-establish himself in Hollywood; many others who were driven out of their jobs were unable to ever come back.
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a classic of its kind. In terms of its economy of presentation, it could be profitably studied by many of today's filmmakers as a lesson in masterly, well-honed, adult filmmaking.
The film as a whole is relentlessly grim from start to finish, and is miles from James Bond territory. Not only is it shot in black and white, but there isn't a single scene blessed with sunlight. Such was director Martin Ritt's determination to create not merely a portrait of one man in his own personal hell, but to imply that under the conditions of cold war, life in western civilization is apt to be psychically deadening for all. Throughout, the condition of being almost permanently cold seems to be fundamental to Spy, so that by the time the film ends you want to consume a stiff hot drink and hug someone.
The plot is this: Leamas returns to Britain after a fatally botched operation in Berlin, shaken and despondent, but wanting to go back out into the field (probably in part to redeem himself in his own eyes). Control, the head of the spy organization, asks him to participate in a scheme to destroy Mundt, their East German enemy. Leamas's assignment is to pretend to have been thrown out of his job and appear to go completely to seed, leaving himself open to recruitment by East German agents in London, who quickly make their appearance on cue. The rest of the movie follows Leamas as he's lured by stages to East Germany, and ultimately brought to the realization that he's been nothing but a pawn used by both sides to accomplish Byzantine ends that he couldn't see coming.
What particularly intrigues me about all this is whether Leamas merely impersonates someone who goes to seed or actually does so after a lifetime of spying. Was he an alcoholic by the time he got this assignment, or was he only pretending to be? Did the strain of months of intentional impersonation as a drunken, defrocked agent unexpectedly take hold of him and hasten a downward slide? The film is never clear on this.
Aside from Burton, Spy offers a slew of notable British and German actors in supporting roles. Cyril Cusack as Leamas's chief is onscreen for only two brief periods, yet it's hard to take your eyes off this wily Irishman, so soft-spoken and detached as he calmly explains how he's going to spin his web to catch Mundt. In his quiet way, Cusack comes close to stealing the scenes he shares with Burton-an impossibility for any ordinary supporting actor. Claire Bloom plays an unmarried woman, an openly and sincerely devoted communist who befriends Leamas when he goes to work in the small library where she's employed. Michael Hordern, a British treasure, is a recruiter for the East German spy ring and makes Leamas's acquaintance when the latter finishes a brief prison term for savagely beating a grocer (in order to attract the East Germans' attention to himself). Hordern's character is a sensitive old queen, and Leamas is sarcastically contemptuous of him, making a series of cutting remarks that would not be politically correct nowadays. Oscar Werner, one of the most appealing film actors of the 20th century (Interlude, The Shoes of the Fisherman, Jules and Jim, Fahrenheit 451, Ship of Fools), gives another of his many impressive performances as a dedicated East German Communist who slowly forms a liking for Leamas; and Peter Van Eyck (whom you've seen playing Nazis in dozens of films) as his brutal superior, Mundt, is unpleasantly convincing as someone quite ready to destroy anyone standing in his way.
Spy, based on John LeCarré's first great espionage novel, is one of the most tightly constructed motion pictures I've ever seen. It doesn't have a wasted frame of film, never yields an inch nor gives the audience a break, and doesn't falter in its view of a career in espionage as damaging and inhuman. Everyone involved is exploited, corrupted, treacherous, or at least disillusioned, and the ones who aren't are usually murdered. Lies are the lingua franca of the people who populate this movie. There are no personal triumphs, not even of spirit remaining triumphant over loss, and the ending remains one of the classic downers in the history of sound films. This was a movie whose makers risked bad-mouth publicity and the loss of audiences. Executives at Paramount, the company that produced it, must have suffered night sweats before the reviews came out.
Made more than 30 years ago, the movie has lost none of its power to emotionally affect audiences. Martin Ritt, whose own career had been temporarily ruined by the Communist witch hunt during the McCarthy era, had a feeling of sympathy for doomed, burnt-out losers caught in a system or situation not (usually) of their own making, struggling to no avail, then ultimately being swallowed up or simply discarded (cf. The Great White Hope, Hud, The Front, and No Down Payment). After several years, Ritt managed to re-establish himself in Hollywood; many others who were driven out of their jobs were unable to ever come back.
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a classic of its kind. In terms of its economy of presentation, it could be profitably studied by many of today's filmmakers as a lesson in masterly, well-honed, adult filmmaking.