Review of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1965) by Barbara R — 10 Aug 2011

Dark and brilliant this film peeks into the underbelly of clandestine affairs, at the height of Cold War intelligence and counterintelligence efforts. Unlike the splashy James Bond films made for the general audience, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold crafts the spy thriller as it should be told - not a story of exploding cars and shoot-outs but one of duplicity, moral ambiguity, and silent double-crossing that destroys swifter and greater than the bullet that follows.

Not to mention the film's intellectual core which is brutally honest about the absence of good and evil and the agents who cross back and forth in that gray area. My favorite quote (of many amazing lines) is protagonist Alec Leamus' final speech: "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?" Richard Burton blew my socks off as Leamus and Nan (Claire Bloom), Fiedler (Oskar Werner) and Mundt were also good as well.

I also saw Voskovec from 12 Angry Men. The music by Sol Koplan was haunting and enigmatic, completing the story. Altogether a powerful film which shouldn't be forgotten.