The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

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Summary: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Review: Alec Leamas, a British spy is sent to East Germany supposedly to defect, but in fact to sow disinformation. As more plot turns appear, Leamas becomes more convinced that his own people see him as just a cog. His struggle back from dehumanization becomes the final focus of the story.

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Summary: color?
Review: Amazon lists this film as being in color. It was shot in b/w. It was colorized in the '80's. I hope this is NOT the colorized version.

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Summary: Gutty, gritty, and gray, 'Spy' is the real deal
Review: Finally! A gritty, gutty portrayal of the most integral (and expendable) piece in the Cold War match: the spy. The Spy Who Came In From the Cold abandons the glitz and gadgets of the James Bond genre in favor of gray, minimalist trappings. The result is one of the best, if underrated, dramas of the 1960's. Richard Burton should have won Best Actor Oscar for his role as the burned out spy Alec Leemas, whose initial bitter denial that he's too old to work as a field agent gets him into the biggest jam of his career. The script is excellent, relying largely on metaphors and terse, but profound, arguments to define its characters instead of guns and special effects. The plot's pace is adult and intricately woven, not wasting a moment. But overall, the use of black and white film (and the minimalistic atmosphere it envokes) is perhaps the biggest asset. The viewer gets a sense that there is really little difference between the hunted and the hunter, between East and West. That in the end, as the saying goes, "we've seen the enemy and he is us."

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Summary: What the world of MI6 is REALLY like!
Review: I saw this movie when it came out, and was immediately struck by how raw and realistic it was. To this day, I have been impressed by every one of Richard Burton's B&W movies. For some reason he shines in them like a beacon, while he slums through the more glamorous, and ultimately less successful color movies he's been in.These movies include: "Look Back In Anger", "Night of the Iguana", "Spy", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", "My Cousin Rachel" and "The Bramble Bush". "Iguana", "Rachel" and "Bush" weren't as impressive as the others, but for some reason, Burton still commands the camera better in them in monochrome than he would have in color. Go figure.

The man was VASTLY underrated as an actor...well, maybe not underrated, but under-CONGRATULATED, since he never won an Oscar for any of his incredible, intense performances! He and Peter O'Toole were the crown PRINCES of intense! O'Toole, also, never won an Oscar, except for the Life Achievement Award he won just recently.

"Spy" was one of those landmark movies of the sixties that broke with type and showed the moviegoing public what life was REALLY like in a certain type of world. "Blow-Up" was another movie like this, showing how strange the world of fashion photographers could be. The psychiatric dramas "David & Lisa" and "Lilith" showed the world of adolescent and adult psychology in a true-to-life fashion, and "Spy" showed how dreary, deadly, grey and angst-ridden espionage could be, going against the glamourous, over-the-top image the Bond and Flint films and all their imitators had projected.

In the film, Burton plays a character named Alec Leames, an upper-middle-aged agent working for British Intelligence in the midst of the Cold War. The film opens with him, in fact, overseeing the defection of an East German at Checkpoint Charlie, perhaps THE major symbol of the Cold War. From there, it follows him in further dealings with East Germany trying to track down a double agent. He falls into a relationship with a pert but naive little communist played by Claire Bloom, gets approached by smarmy types trying to get him to defect to the OTHER side, with him masquerading AS a possible defector for BI, under the auspices of Cyril Cusack, an actor who has played some of the most condescending elitist types in movies. His characters are almost always in powerful middle management positions and always, ALWAYS have pedantic attitudes. His character, though he actually ISN'T the legendary George Smiley, was nonetheless the obvious prototype for Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal of Smiley in the BBC/PBS series based on Le Carre's novels. The Smiley character is actually a minor entity in this film, played by a rather nerdy actor.

Oskar Werner, who, along with Cusack, was very hot in "important" movies at the time, plays an East German investigator, prosecutor and negotiator. Cusack, in fact, starred with him in the Truffaut sci-fi classic "Fahrenheit 451" as well. Burton, Bloom, Cusack, Werner and Michael Holdern (Lillian Helman's long-lost twin brother)....This cast couldn't have gotten any classier if it had tried!

The B&W cinematography, the casting, Burton's performance, the relentlessly grey and doleful feel of the film, Martin Ritt's expert direction, (the man was a VERY reliable "good movie" director,) all add the dramatic touches that make this film the absolute BEST film about espionage in my experience! Claire Bloom's character, Nan, offsets and emphasizes the dreary feel of the movie with her own naiveté and altruism.

Why this film didn't sweep the '66 Academy Awards, I'll never know, but rest assured, it was the best dramatic offering in theaters that year. A complex, disturbing, important and incredible film that should, in retrospect, be honored for the work of art it was.

Highly recommended!

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Summary: From LeCarre, With Love...
Review: In the wake of the success of James Bond, every other film in the 1960's seemed to be about spies in one way or another. This tight little espionage film is the complete opposite extreme to the world of 007 - it's shot in gritty black and white on mostly seedy locations and populated almost entirely by the sort of characters you would never invite home for dinner. Also much more realistic than The Ipcress File, this early story by John Le Carre shows the flair for convoluted plots and two-faced characters that would make later works such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People so fascinating. The enigmatic George Smiley is even a minor player in this caper, but the central character is much more of a Sixties anti-hero.

Richard Burton plays Alec Leamas, a slightly over the hill, vaguely alcoholic, somewhat cynical operative who becomes the key player - or possibly pawn - in an elaborate plot to protect a high-ranking double agent in East Germany in the darkest days of the cold war. Burton gives one of his better and more restrained performances - not shouting so much and letting his expressive eyes do a lot of the acting for him. Not surprisingly, he makes quite a believeable drunk - and an almost equally believable possible defector. Only in the film's final scene does that credibility slip slightly, but by then he has done his job and can be forgiven a momentary lapse.

Even better in the acting department is Oskar Werner as the East German counter-intelligence officer who is feared by everyone because of his brilliance and disliked by his compatriots because he is Jewish. Werner masterfully displays the cool and calculating demeanor of his character - always thinking and underplaying wonderfully until he suddenly erupts with passion or anger. He is both dangerous and charming. Not necessarily a villain, but a man to be very very careful with. Werner does not appear until the second half of the film but, when he does, all the tension and electricity in the air shifts up a gear.

Burton's frequent co-star Claire Bloom provides a kind of love interest as a non-descript Englishwoman with decidedly left-wing views. Peter Van Eyck is cold steel as an East German intelligence chief. Michael Hordern takes a change of pace to play an effeminate British agent. Even James Bond's M - Bernard Lee - puts in an appearance. Not as someone in the secret service but as the rather dour owner of a corner shop.

The look of the film is one of grim reality. We can almost believe that this is the way real spies live, die and operate. Until we remember that this is just a movie and hope that what we are watching is no more an accurate representation of reality than the exploits of Ian Fleming's hero. It's a good film - a thought-provoking one. And a measure of its success is how much we believe in it.

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Summary: Cold-Blooded Fever
Review: Inside a grim little room in the empty countryside somewhere east of the Berlin wall an East German agent is interrogating a defecting British spy. The defector is anxious and weary. He wants his money now. Prompting the Communist agent to say this : "You are a traitor, the lowest currency of the cold war. We buy you, we sell you, we lose you, we can even shoot you. Not a bird in the trees would stir if we did just that."

Except that Alec Leamas(Richard Burton) is not really a defector, he is only masquerading as one. On his last assignment for the British Secert Service, he is to pretend to be burnt out and jobless. Never faraway from a bottle he walks around the streets of London cynical and depressed, his "masterstroke" in this act is an ugly fight with a shopkeeper who refuses to give him credit. This ofcourse attracts the attention of the East German agants who view him as a potential defector because of his dire need for cash and his embitterment towards the British Agency for abandoning him. It is a credit to Burton's brilliant and painfully realistic performance that you are pretty sure his embitterment in not entirely an act. That he really is a drunk. That he wholeheartedly agrees with the German when he calls him "the lowest currency of the cold war", even if he is not a defector. To him, all spies, on both sides, are scum.

John Le Carre was an ex-British intelligence officer when he wrote the celebrated novel on which this film was based. It was called "the finest spy story ever written" by the writer of The Third Man, Graham Greene. And in a sense, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold starts where The Third Man left off. The lead character has already lost any faith he had in humanity. I suspect that the only reason Leamas hadn't really defected is because even money has lost its lure. Surprisingly the most sympathetic characters in the book(and the film) are the communist spy Fiedler(Oskar Werner) and naive communist librarian Liz Gold(renamed Nan Perry in the film and played by Claire Bloom), and both pay dearly for it. In the world of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold idealism is not merely misguided, it is pathetic. When Fiedler sincerely asks Leamus "How do you sleep at night without a philosophy?". Leamus's typically jaded answer is "I don't believe in God or Karl Marx. I don't believe in anything that rocks the world. I reserve the right to remain ignorant."

In adapting the novel, scripters Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper retained the icy restraint of the novel. Director Martin Ritt(who made the better known but inferior Norma Rae) shoots the film in a harsh black and white. Accompanied by a sad violin score, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is finally a sentimental film about unsentimentality. Ridiculously Burton lost out on the Oscar infavour of Lee Marvin in the frankly ridiculous Cat Ballou. The film was nominated for just one other Oscar which was for Art-Direction. A shame. With its moral and asthetic complexity, this is as far away from Bond or Tom Clancy based thrillers as you can get. Possibly the greatest film in its genre, and in its own quiet way the equal of The Third Man. The final message being that people who are driven enough to enter the world of espionage are not(and can't afford to be) driven by ideals. In that world the only motive is expediency.

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Summary: Burton at his Most Impressively Brooding
Review: Richard Burton's brooding performance coupled with appropriately grim black and white photography from cameraman Oswald Morris provide just the proper mood as the masterpiece thriller from former British intelligence operative John Le Carre was brought to the screen in 1965 with capable fidelity.

While a British production, the film's director was American Martin Ritt, an accomplished master of providing films of compelling seriousness with a touch of the grim, as exemplified by "No Down Payment", "Hud" and "The Front." Burton plays an intelligence operative gone to seed, hence the reference to "coming out of the cold" which, in spy talk, involves being taken out of the field of operation. Burton goes to planned seed, becoming an alcoholic who ultimately is thrown into prison for pummeling a thoroughly decent London grocer who had extended him credit and ultimately had to draw the line, incurring Burton's well orchestrated rage in accordance with plans from MI5.

As soon as Burton leaves prison Michael Hordern is waiting for him. They discuss "doing articles," a cover for what is really expected, turning allegiance and going to work for the Soviets. During this period Burton is provided with a job at a small library featuring psychic works. It is here that he meets Claire Bloom, an ideologue who attends local Communist study groups as a way of making a difference in a troubled world.

Burton operates in a realm of barely contained rage. He inveighs Hordern with scorn and is not about to disagree with Oskar Werner when the East Germany Communist ideologue refers to Burton and his ilk as "the lowest currency of the Cold War."

Burton's contempt for his role in a grimy affair is enhanced by the fact that he has been sent to East Germany to clear Peter Van Eyck of charges that he is a double agent working for Britain. Werner has shrewdly pegged him, and British intelligence does all it can to help a ruthless individual it took charge of after he murdered a man on a trip to England during an East German traveling trade exhibit. Eventually Bloom surfaces as a prop to assist the contemptible Van Eyck.

More twists and turns occur until ultimately Burton wonders just what the future holds for him, and whether Bloom, the only person he cares for in life, will be part of it. Circumstances ultimately answer important questions for Burton as he is propelled through a swirl of events masterminded by wily intelligence operatives to his ultimate destiny.

This is a spectacularly moody giant of a film. Guy Troper and Paul Rehn fashioned a brilliant script which meshes with Le Carre's chilling suspense masterpiece. "Spy" was a deserving recipient of a Best Film British Academy Award. It bristles with controlled rage and sizzling wit delivered with the proper measure of acid by Burton in one of his enduring roles.

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Summary: Burton Always Makes the Character His
Review: Richard Burton, even when miscast (and here he most certainly is not), always turns in a great performance. In the The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, he comes through once again. Burton's character is believable and seems genuine in his on-screen relationships. His monologues are delivered in the familiar Burton style - intense and interesting, and impossible to overlook. It has been written elsewhere that Oskar Werner almost steals the show in this film, and I would agree. His character matches Burton's for realism and depth. Claire Bloom, the quintessential dramatic supporting actress, is also quite good - she gives her character innocence and a caring nature - the perfect compliment and antithesis to the ruthlessness of the film's underlying themes. This is one of my favorite films. There are unfortunately no more Richard Burtons.

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Summary: Realistic
Review: Ritt's masterpiece is a movie about British agent Alec Leamas who gets called back from the field when too many of the double agents under his care are killed by the East Germans. Leamas is directed by British intelligence to appear as an agent who is slipping into alcoholic decadence. He assaults an innocent grocer and is sent to prison. After his release he is recruited by the Soviets.

Before going to prison Leamas meets an attractive girl who is a British communist. She becomes the only person he really cares for while his work as a spy forces him to become increasingly cynical.

As often pointed out the film lacks the gadgetry and magic of other spy movies from its era. Instead the emphasis is on reality and negative human emotions such as despair, self-loathing, greed and fear. The plot becomes quite intricate especially after Leamas returns to the field posing as a paid defector.

The cast is superb. Richard Burton stars as Alec Leamas. Clair Bloom is his girl friend Nan Perry and Oskar Werner excells as a crafty communist agent.

The film received Oscar nominations in 1965 for Best Actor (Richard Burton) and B&W Art Direction. Martin Ritt directed many other good movies in his career including THE MOLLY MAGUIRES.

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Summary: BOLD, DARK, TENSE.... A TRUE SPY CLASSIC!!!!
Review: The first thing you must know about this film is that it is nothing like James Bond. Bond films are full of gadgets, sex, Martinis and flashy action sequences...

...While this film presents you a whole different vision (that one might think is a lot more closer to reality - if such could be achieved concerning the espionage theme).

It tells the story of an older british spy stationed in Berlin who refuses to come home and accept a job behind a desk. What he does instead is go on a very dangerous mission the ends up nothing like you may expect.

This film has many great things. First it looks closely at the sometimes wicked world of espionage, where good people sometimes do horrible things. In such world, spies
are nothing but pawns (unlike the hero imagem displayed on most espionage thrillers). Here, you will find a lot of broken down people and moral dilemas.

The second great thing about this film is the cast. Richard Burton is the perfect man for this role: his performance is a powerhouse. After seeing the film, I got the impression there are no more actors today with such a strong, commanding face. He really makes you believe such spies exist. The whole cast shines with Claire Bloom, Cyril Cusack and Oskar Werner.

Third great thing: the black and white cinematography by Oswald Morris is superb! It gives enhances the bleak, cold vision of a political world where truth and good are just a matter of point of view.

This is not a James Bond-like action thriller full of escapades and mad scientists. This is a film about people (who happen to work on the espionage business) and the way they can possibly be used.

Unforgettable!