The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965)
Directed by Martin Ritt
British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the Cold War during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.
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What critics compared The Spy Who Came In from the Cold to
A neo-Cold War thriller would seem like just the ticket for cineastes who fondly recall Iron Curtain-courting capers on the order of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Fail-Safe and select James Bond exploits.
No one is going to mistake “Red Sparrow” for, say, Martin Ritt’s “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”
Or that the ending exchange of prisoners comes right out of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold?
Films like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold or, more recently, Bridge of Spies are studies in betrayal, subterfuge and human weakness.
Based on the novel by Jason Matthews, Justin Haythe's screenplay has more in common with cerebral spy films such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" than action flicks like "Atomic Blonde".
Using a screenplay polished and honed by the Coen Brothers, Spielberg dips into John le Carré territory (you can't help but think of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold when Donovan looks onto the newly erected Berlin Wall, in the searchlights, in the snow).
(The dark, dimly lit interiors and exteriors shot by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski could very well translate as the black-and-white world depicted in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.)
Not since “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” has Berlin looked so cold and sinister.
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…never quite went the route of the spy spoof Get Smart (although the third season could get awfully campy, a side effect of the Batman craze), it offered enough of a wink-wink-nudge-nudge attitude to make even the playful 007 flicks look as serious-minded as The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by comparison.
There have been some, such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Tailor of Panama" and "The Constant Gardener," that have done a reasonably good job of transposing the material into cinematic terms without losing too much of the material in the process while others, including the largely forgotten likes of "The Deadly Affair," "The Looking Glass War" and the dreadful "The Little Drummer Girl," that made such utter hash of his words that even those who had actually read the stories had virtually no idea what was going on at any given time.
There might not be any 20th Century novelist as well-served by dramatic adaptations of his works as British spy author (and former British spy) John le Carré: the not-as-great films taken from his body of work feature such wholly enjoyable thinking-heavy thrillers as The Russia House and The Tailor of Panama , while the great ones include the rather terrific '60s film The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and the outstanding 1979 BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , one of the finest things aired on television in that decade.
Fans of The Ipcress File and le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, rejoice.
The following year, Smiley slipped into “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold,” which remains le Carré’s most celebrated work, partly because it scraped every lingering speck of James Bond from our understanding of what spying might entail.
Standouts include Cyril Cusack as the borderline villainous MI6 chief, Michael Hordern as a pervy and pathetic low-level communist operative, and Rupert Davies as the polite, mostly well-intentioned agent, George Smiley – le Carré’s inherently decent, utterly repressed signature character who was later played by Alec Guinness in two acclaimed TV adaptations: 1979’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and 1982’s “Smiley’s People.”
Reminding me a great deal of Richard Burton �s performance in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Hudson�s emotional grip on his new reality starting to come crashing down around him and the oddness of the situation is only enhanced by James Wong Howe�s magnificent cinematography.