Slaying Dragons

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2014)

"Every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century - without exception - has either been crushed, overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilised, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one was permitted to rise or fall on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard." - William Blum ("US military and CIA interventions since World War II")
This is a review of Martin Ritt's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965) and Tomas Alfredson's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (2011), two films based on espionage novels by John Le Carre.
Arguably the finest spy movie ever made, "Cold" was directed by Martin Ritt. As he was loosely affiliated with various left-wing movements, Ritt was blacklisted in the 1950s. This period saw the US government putting the squeeze on worker movements, unions, civil rights activists and communist groups within the United States, as well as embarking on a (thus far) 100 year campaign to murderously eradicate the same in over 80 countries across the world. Coupled to this is/was a covert war against both independence movements and any and all threats to capitalist profit (everything from Catholic priests to Bittorrent websites). Covert US actions against Indonesia, for example, would see some 3 million killed, and the outright murdering of both the Indonesian communist party and those who supported it. Total deaths incurred over the last century, in similar actions, total more than ten million, with hundreds of millions more dying to the policies, death squads and puppet regimes subsequently erected in these targeted countries. John Stockwell, former CIA station chief, would sum up such actions thus: "Nothing we were doing in fact defended US national security interests. Genocide is genocide. We are responsible for doing these things, on a massive scale, worldwide."
Martin Ritt is yet another American director who did his best work in the 1960s and 70s. His filmography as a whole can be divided into at least three groups. One group tends to be preoccupied with watching as characters, who represent a very modern ethos of predatory capitalism, come into contact with their opposites ("Hud", "Brotherhood" and "Hombre"). Another group focuses on the lives of the marginalised, often African Americans ("Sounder", "Conrack", "The Great White Hope" etc). Yet another group tends to deal with movements or organisations being infiltrated and undermined by the literal or figurative foot-soldiers of either communism or capitalism ("Norma Rae", "Molly Maguires" etc).
"The Spy Who Came In From the Cold" belongs to this third group. Filmed in moody blacks and whites, the film stars Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, a British Intelligence officer who embarks on a relationship with a young communist in order to infiltrate Russian Intelligence. Ironically, and to Leamas' dismay, the film climaxes with Leamas being betrayed by British Intelligence and his young lover being assassinated in order to protect the identity of a British agent. "Return to your own side," a loudspeaker warns, our heroes falling prey to violent demarcations which allow for no physical or ideological crossover. For John Le Carre, there is no moral difference between West and East, and little ideological difference between the capitalist Empires and the state capitalism of a supposedly "communist", post-monarchist Russia. But while Le Carre skewers all idealism and belief, Ritt will not let go of personal idealism. "Americans fight for ignorance, we for truth and societal growth," he has characters say, and his Soviet Union is presented less as a bogeyman than as a hangdog family that is perpetually hounded from outside.
Aesthetically, "Cold" represents Ritt at the height of his powers. Antonioni with cloaks and daggers, the film treats us to several wonderful long-takes, and is obsessed with literal and symbolic borders, doubles, barriers and crossings. Elsewhere everyone in British Intelligence has an opposite number within the Soviet Union, East and West playing shadowy games rife with feints and parries, bluffs and double-bluffs. And like all of Ritt's films, "Cold" is haunted by the possibility of the mole, the double agent, ideology always paranoid and fearful, not only of its own inadequacies, but of contamination.
"Cold" (1965) recalls Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" (1969), but works best as an antidote to the James Bond movies, which opened in 1962. Where Bond is the product of a culture of commodities and swollen egos, "Cold" does everything it can to portray the West as a shadowy prison-yard of anguish, rage and malaise. This quiet suffering is conveyed well by Burton, whose casting recalls the spiritual and emotional currents of Britain's class conscious New Wave movements, as well as his own role in Antonioni's "Red Desert" (1964), released one year earlier.
"Cold" is slow and demands attention, but ultimately rewards its audience. Less satisfying is Tomas Alfredson's "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", an interesting film which tries a little too hard to mimic Ritt's aesthetic. Revolving around George Smiley (Gary Oldman), a British Intelligence operative who comes out of retirement in order to find a mole responsible for leaking information to Russia, the film is less a witch-hunt than a depressing procedural in which East and West debase themselves in the name of what one character calls an "arbitrary aesthetic choice". "Don't you think it's time to recognise there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?" Smiley outright says. Without Ritt to temper such moral equivalences the film then ends on a note of nihilism, but a powerful one nonetheless, secret agents faking embraces and playing games of seduction at midnight dances.
7.9/10 - "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"
10/10 – "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold"