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madali
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« on: October 25, 2011, 02:50:PM » |
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The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965)
I'm not a big fan of spy thrillers, especially those made in the Cold War era. But "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" was exceptionally good.
This is not James Bond or Jason Bourne. This is a gritty, depressing, sad world of spies, full of lies and false identifies. Unlike other spy movies, we never really have anything the spies are trying to really stop. No bomb, no terrorist attack, nothing except spying, with the people in it, acting like it is nothing more than an occupational duty, without any real ideology behind it. Both sides are expected to spy on each other, and both sides are expected to try and find the spy and prosecute him, and there doesn't seem to be any bad feeling about it on either side. Everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing, and it feels mechanical and business-like.
Our spy, Leamas, is played brilliantly by Richard Burton. His task is pretend to be disillusioned with his job, so the other side will approach him thinking he has defected. But Burton plays his character to show that he actually IS disillusioned. My favorite part of the film is the long, cold stares Burton gives other characters. It doesn't have the violence of other spy movies, but the cold, stares itself seems to make the characters more dangerous than James Bond et al.
"What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?"
4/5
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