THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (78)

Directed by: Martin Ritt (1965)

Starring: Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner, Peter Van Eyck

The Pitch: A British master spy during the Cold War is apparently embittered at his bosses, and ripe for recruitment by the other side.

Theo Sez: Some may call this excessively plot-driven, especially since it starts off like a melancholy mood-piece : the Mamet-like twists and turns of the final stages aren't quite as poetic as the sight of Burton's weary, cynical spy ("I don't believe in Father Christmas, God or Karl Marx ; I don't believe in anything that rocks the world") wandering around a seedy, rainy London. Yet the two facets do actually work together, Oswald Morris' high-contrast photography (harsh even by mid-60s standards : faces are almost whited-out in some scenes) building a sense of a pitiless, unforgiving world that makes the courtroom climax incredibly tense - you really get the feel of what's at stake, know for a fact that no quarter will be given. Certainly among the best films of a very weak year for movies (it'd make a fun double-bill with THE IPCRESS FILE from the same year, which is essentially the same film played tongue-in-cheek), as well as the finest big-screen version of Le Carré and a welcome corrective to Ritt's knee-jerk-liberal movies of the 70s (CONRACK, NORMA RAE) : he's admirably nuanced and objective here, denouncing ideology on both Left and Right. "Compassion's not enough," says Bloom's deluded Party girl - "it's got to be organised, disciplined to be of any use" ; but compassion in the face of a grim Cold War world is exactly what the film is about.