The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

February 24, 2012

1965, Martin Ritt

A British espionage thriller in the Cold War, shot in black and white and adapted from a John le Carre novel, sounds absolutely tailor-made for me. Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold held up strong to my lofty expectations and gave me a cold, brooding character study of epic proportions. Coming right at the beginning of the James Bond phenomena (Dr. No was released three years prior), this presents itself as the anti-Bond, a calculated and quiet study built more around it’s characters than it’s action. The silent moments are the important ones here and here are plenty of them, every glance meaning more than it appears as British agent Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) stays out in the cold for just a little longer.

Leamas is an agent of a certain age and there’s pressure for him to call it quits and settle with a desk job, but he doesn’t want to dream of not being in the field and he’s assigned to bring down a man responsible for the death of one of his own. The mission is possibly the most dangerous that Leamas has faced so far, as he is sent undercover into Germany to work his way into the operation of his foes and tear them apart from the inside out. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is certainly a quiet beast, but the emphasis there should be on the “beast”, as it manages to load itself with intensity in even the smallest moments. A conversation between Leameas and the East German operative Fiedler (Oskar Werner) who examines him quickly turns from a common chat into a brutal conversation, with Burton biting down on the superb dialogue given to him and commanding the screen.

As always, Burton is at his best when given powerful words and there are plenty here to let him make his towering presence known. A year later he would deliver the performance that most consider his finest in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but in my eyes he was never better than he is here. Leamas is a slowly unraveling antique of a world that no longer needs him and he fuses his portrayal with undercurrents of malice, resentment and determination that fuel every moment we see of him on screen. The whole cast manages to leave an impression, including Claire Bloom as Burton’s love interest, but special note goes to Werner, whose Jewish German agent is loaded with the political subtext of being a Jewish soldier on a side littered with men who only a few years ago would have shot him dead without hesitation. Werner presents himself with an unpredictable discomfort, giving us the idea that this man is capable of anything if he’s pushed far enough against the wall.

The film boils down to an extended courtroom sequence that is gripping, high-staked and filled with emotional extremes and sensational acting. There’s an eleventh hour twist that genuinely threw me for a loop and it all concludes with a stunning, devastating finale. Along with the narrative itself, there is the often-placed themes running through much of le Carre’s work that explore the true nature of men in this line of work. There’s a monologue that Burton delivers near the end which chastises these men, states that they aren’t the suave and charming playboys the world believes them to be but are instead queers, alcoholics and little, broken men drowning in the mud even more than anyone else. It’s a master class study on fascinating men, and it just may be the greatest espionage film ever made. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is everything that le Carre would have wanted it to be; a very muted and isolated Cold War thriller that somehow uses it’s silence to make itself that much more fascinating and suspenseful.

Film #73 of The 365 Film Challenge.

1:46am | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZlWstxGxXY5h

(Notes: 5)