The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

What do you think spies are? They are a bunch of seedy squalid bastards like me.......

The world in author John le Carre's books is shadowy and filled with such individuals.  The Cold War was truly a literary "goose that laid the golden eggs", spawning numerous tales of espionage and infiltration on both sides of the Iron Curtain.  The novels spent a great amount of time in MI6 headquarters in Britain, detailing its cunning agency chiefs and their footmen.  Many characters appear in more than one novel. 1965's THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD is based on le Carre's 1963 bestseller of the same name, and Paul Dehn and Guy Trosper's screenplay is said to be quite faithful.

Richard Burton turns in one of his finest performances as Alec Leamus, an operative in West Berlin who has lost an agent in a failed mission.  Rather than being relieved of the agency, Leamus is given the assignment of appearing to be an underemployed, destitute lush on the streets of London.  He even gets himself arrested for assaulting a grocer.  This is rightly assumed to raise the attention of East German Intelligence, who see the man as ripe for recruitment and possible defection.  A knowledgeable tongue easily loosened by his hard lot of late (and some money, of course).

The Communists want British intel.  Is it true, as Leamus claims, that East German officer Mundt (Peter van Eyck) is actually working for the Brits? The spy is interviewed/accosted by the other side's operatives, including Fiedler (Oskar Werner), a master interrogator.  There are many holes in Leamus' story, complicated further by Nan (Claire Bloom), a British woman (and Communist) with whom he became involved while still in London.   There will be a clandestine tribunal with Mundt on trial.  Who will be indicted? Vindicated? Afterward, Leamus will learn how successful his mission truly was.  The last scene does not feel like a fantasy.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD is a lean, beautifully filmed, cold as ice drama that may be too talky for some viewers.  Many would prefer an occasional chase scene to interrupt all the blather.  This is not a 007 adventure.  Like some other le Carre adaptations, the thrills and intrigue are in the words and ideologies.  The damndest things happen while someone is merely sipping their coffee.  The realities of spy work are in dank quarters and bleak cityscapes and countrysides.  In piles of administrative busy work and endless bureaucracy.

Burton is marvelous in portraying Leamus' arrogant, defeated, yet still all too wise, persona.  A man without a country, or even an identity.  Forgetting who he is "fighting" for.  Both sides are filled with souls just doing their country's bidding, right or wrong (mostly the latter).