"The Spy Who Came In From the Cold" works really hard to be a grim, merciless expose of the harshness and amorality of espionage. The movie works so hard at this that it ends up being a rather remote exercise in nihilism. Characters who could have been allowed human depth lack it. Everyone on screen is meant to be a mere puppet in the hands of Cold War puppet masters. Rather, though, everyone on screen is a puppet in the hands of novelist John Le Carre and Martin Ritt, the director.
An example: even a very minor character, Miss Crail, a librarian, played by Anne Blake, is made to read her very few, neutral lines as if she were a Austin-Powers style villain bent on destroying the world, when, in fact, she's just a librarian hoping for an orderly card catalogue. Nan (Claire Bloom), the communist, is made out to be an empty shell who's been impregnated with silly, ditzy, empty ideals. Every time two men interact in front of a third, one dominates and insults the other, as when two spy recruiters meet with a likely candidate at a strip club.
The plot is not at all complex: an aging spy master, Alec Leamas, is lured into a final mission in East Germany. There he learns that things are not as he had been lead to believe. The twist is not all that interesting or shocking. The ending is, though; it's one of the grimmest endings I've ever seen.
In fact, the film works so hard to be unnecessarily abstruse, and to convey an impression that there is no real humanity on planet earth that we are all just unpleasant insects scurrying around a heartless hive that the viewer wonders why she should care about any of these spy v. spy shenanigans going on on screen.
Given the technical excellence of the film, I couldn't help but reflect on how much better it would have been had the filmmakers even attempted to convey some element of humanity. I'm not asking that the characters be more likable; I'm just wishing that they had been more three dimensional, more human. I would have cared about them, then, and the film would have had more of an impact.
Claire Bloom, years before this film, had lost her virginity to Richard Burton, a rising star, married, then, to Sybil Burton. Burton was a dog to women and broke Bloom's, and many others' hearts. By the time she starred with him in this movie, she had come to regard him as a "practiced seducer" Her character's name had to be changed from "Liz" to "Nan," because, of course, Burton was, by this point, married to Liz Taylor. Some of Bloom's and Burton's lines carry a double entendre. His character says of hers, "She gave me free love. At that point, that was all I could afford." The best scenes in the movie are between Burton and Oskar Werner, who was never boring on screen, and who should have made more movies. Burton is, as ever, volcanic and intense, while Werner steals their scenes. How he does it, I cannot say, because with Werner you don't see the gears.
An example: even a very minor character, Miss Crail, a librarian, played by Anne Blake, is made to read her very few, neutral lines as if she were a Austin-Powers style villain bent on destroying the world, when, in fact, she's just a librarian hoping for an orderly card catalogue. Nan (Claire Bloom), the communist, is made out to be an empty shell who's been impregnated with silly, ditzy, empty ideals. Every time two men interact in front of a third, one dominates and insults the other, as when two spy recruiters meet with a likely candidate at a strip club.
The plot is not at all complex: an aging spy master, Alec Leamas, is lured into a final mission in East Germany. There he learns that things are not as he had been lead to believe. The twist is not all that interesting or shocking. The ending is, though; it's one of the grimmest endings I've ever seen.
In fact, the film works so hard to be unnecessarily abstruse, and to convey an impression that there is no real humanity on planet earth that we are all just unpleasant insects scurrying around a heartless hive that the viewer wonders why she should care about any of these spy v. spy shenanigans going on on screen.
Given the technical excellence of the film, I couldn't help but reflect on how much better it would have been had the filmmakers even attempted to convey some element of humanity. I'm not asking that the characters be more likable; I'm just wishing that they had been more three dimensional, more human. I would have cared about them, then, and the film would have had more of an impact.
Claire Bloom, years before this film, had lost her virginity to Richard Burton, a rising star, married, then, to Sybil Burton. Burton was a dog to women and broke Bloom's, and many others' hearts. By the time she starred with him in this movie, she had come to regard him as a "practiced seducer" Her character's name had to be changed from "Liz" to "Nan," because, of course, Burton was, by this point, married to Liz Taylor. Some of Bloom's and Burton's lines carry a double entendre. His character says of hers, "She gave me free love. At that point, that was all I could afford." The best scenes in the movie are between Burton and Oskar Werner, who was never boring on screen, and who should have made more movies. Burton is, as ever, volcanic and intense, while Werner steals their scenes. How he does it, I cannot say, because with Werner you don't see the gears.