A Dull Puzzle

EVER SINCE the story broke in 1951 that Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, all top ranking members of British intelligence, had been secretly spying for the Soviets, writers and directors have returned time and again to the case as classic source material. Scores of books of both fact and fiction have played on the public's endless astonishment at the depths of the treachery, which, at the height of the Cold War, reached into Britain's most prized military secrets.

The choice is not surprising Much of the story's appeal lies in a kind of begrudging admiration by the public toward these men of aristocratic background and Oxbridge education who, even as they rose through the ranks of national service, held fast to the radical beliefs they had gained as youths.

Of all the works that have borrowed on the Philby affair, the most successful has been John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a maze-like thriller that details the entrapment and confession of a double agent. It was Le Carre who gave currency to the word "mole," a term denoting a traitor implanted deep in an intelligence network that is now a fixed part of espionage jargon. And while Le Carne and others like him explore the professional side of the celebrated case, others concentrate on the story's personal dimensions. This summer's highly acclaimed film, Another Country, based on the play of the same name, seeks to trace the roots of radicalism and betrayal to the disillusionment with the class power and sexual politics of British boarding schools.

Now, with Terrence Young's filn. The Jigsaw Man, there is yet another product from the Philby industry, albeit a cheap one. This half-hearted attempt at a spy caper feeds heavily upon the actual case as well as borrowing generously from Le Carre's work--though without any of the former's excitement. Has Young gone to the well once too often, or is the subject simply in need of more skillful handling?

The movie opens in Moscow where the former head of the British secret service, played by Michael Caine, has been living ever since jumping ship two decades ago. That the character is named Philip Kimberly, a not too subtle play on Kim Philby, is early testimony to the film's lack of originality. No longer of any use to his Soviet hosts and subsisting on vodka and memories, the aging Kimberly is visited by his KGB friend who hands him that day's issue of Pravda with an article announcing Kimberly's death. Half a dozen soldiers then drag him away to a hidden hospital where he receives a remarkable facelift that leaves him looking twenty years younger and dectdedly Russian.

In a post-op briefing session, Kimberly received his instructions. Disguised as a commercial attache, he is to retrieve a long lost dossier containing the names of all Soviet controlled spies operating in Britain during Kimberly's days. Although the early scenes are tightly done, this early promise is soon squandered in much of the useless talk, poor humor and muddled action that follows.

Well aware that a less publicized but more permanent funeral awaits him in the Soviet Union once he heads over the dossier, Kimberly decides to defect in England--this time as Serge Kosminsky, commercial attache, Quickly slipping out of the hands of the British Foreign Office, Kimberly goes on to search for the document. Enter Admiral Scaithe, played by Laurence Oliver, Kimberly's successor in British intelligence and the man assigned to track down the supposed defector. Having watched Kimberly's supposed funeral on televison, Scaithe does not immediately suspect that his former colleague and friend is back in town but when fingerprints from the Forcign Office reveal that the two men are the same, the affair takes on a heightened sense of emergency Scalthe now recalls the legendary lost documents and correctly deduces that they are the purpose of Kimberly's arrival.

The link that eventually connects Kimberly with Scaithe is Kimberly's daughter, Penny, who has grown up under a false name after being abandoned by her father as a young girl. After a tearful reunion. Penny realizes that her father is the fox in a massive hunt and she hides him away in the country. Yet unbeknownst to Penny, her lover of the past year is also a secret agent working on the case who eventually leads Scaither to Kimberly. Le Carre fans will recognize this twist as a direct crib from Smiley's People, in which George Smiley, by kindnapping his Russian rival's daughter, pulls the heartstrings that lead to his archenemy's capture.

THE CHIEF FAILURE of The Jigsaw Man is that a case of international dimensions is treated with the importance of an episode of S.W.A.T.. Only Olivier's appearance as the crusty and acerbic Scaithe partially redeems the film. He peppers the otherwise inane conversation with his biting and volatile temper, lashing out at bungling subordinates and proving to be always a step ahead of the rest. With him and Caine back together on the screen again, the movie could have evolved into an action packed version of Sleuth, with two spies par excellance trying to outsmart one another.

But instead of a chess match the makers of the film opt for a dressed up car chase and fail to realize the excitement that the raw material promises.

The Jigsaw Man is a desperate attempt to squeeze the last bits of entertainment from a once exciting, but now worn topic. Given the thoroughness with which the Philby affair has been dealt with in movies, books and the press, it appears to be time for writers and directors to find a fresher scandal.