The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

There seem to be two schools of thought about The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: 1) if you read the book, which was a better-than-most spy story, then the movie is okay, but not as good as it would have been had you not read the book; 2) if you read the book, the movie is still great because Richard Burton is so good. I read the book, and thought the movie, thanks to Burton, was great.

The plot (faithfully reproduced from the John Le Carre novel by Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper) is complicated. Spies and counterspies. British agents trying to bump off Communist agents and vice versa. Loyalties are obscured because you don't know who's working for whom; sympathies are initially nonexistant because the good guys are every bit as ruthless as the bad. Control, head of British intelligence, is well done by Cyril Cusack with his tea pots and easy acceptance of Cold War expediencies. He says to Leamas (Burton): "Our policies are peaceful, but our methods can't afford to be less ruthless than our enemies'--occasionally we have to do wicked things. The West is never the aggressor, but since the war our techniques have become very much the same. You can't be less wicked than your enemy just because your government is benevolent."

But from the cynicism and out of the grey rain and cold, there emerges Burton's own narrow, rather seedy humanity. He shows his distaste for Control, for London. He loves, in his homely way, Nan (Claire Bloom). He predictably shows his contempt for Mundt and Fiedler, the two Communist spies, and takes satisfaction in playing the one off against the other. He shows no regret when he beats up a grocer, and only irritation at Fiedler's fate. And finally, Leamas is forced to define his relationship to senseless, inhuman intrigues of Control and Mundt.

As Leamas and Nan are escaping from East Germany, she asks him over and over again how he can just let people die. He says finally and desperately that it is so people like her can go on living their own ignorant, safe lives. When he is asked to give up even his pathetic, little feeling for her, he seems to say if there is no line drawn at all on expediency, what's the point?

Sol Kaplan's music catches something of the grey and cold. The photography is drab like Check Point Charlie, and not very imaginative. There are lots of long shots of Burton's eyes where he registers fear, confusion, love, and, in the end, disbelief.

There are several unfortunate lines that from the way they are delivered, make you wonder if they are intended to refer to Burton's role in Becket. Control refers to Fiedler as the "acolyte who will one day stab the high priest in the back;" and Burton refers to the warden in the prison as the Archbishop of Canterbury. It's not the right kind of movie for clever allusions. The lines would have been better left out.

Martin Ritt, who both produced and directed, deserves credit for his cast. Oskar Werner as Fiedler and Peter Van Eyck as Mundt are good in the court room scene, though in general Werner is rather over-done and Van Eyck wooden. Claire Bloom elicits just the right amount of love from Burton. And Burton, when he sits waiting to be interviewed for a job, when he makes contact with the Communist agent, and when he looks down from the Berlin wall at Smiley, is superb. All he has to do is whisper, "I have to go early in the morning," and he has a love scene.

If you read the book and remember vaguely what happened, it will give you just that much more perspective on Burton's control. You never know what is going on, you never know who's who, until he knows.