Spies Like Us: John le Carré on the Screen
Tags: Film, Television, TV, Features, John Le Carre

The British novelist John le Carré, who has died aged 89, will forever be associated with the Cold War, despite having written as much set after that conflict as during it. Indeed, one of his most notable achievements was the way in which his spy stories moved with the times — embracing and exploring new realities so that, in his final novel, Agent Running in the Field, Brexit seems as much a part of the cultural fabric as partitioned Germany did in his first 1960s publications. Unlike many genre novelists, and indeed unlike many of his characters, le Carré didn’t live in the past.

Even so, it’s almost inevitable that (despite a series of film adaptations of his later works in the 1990s and 2000s, most of them creditable and well-received, if rarely exceptional), le Carré on the screen will always be represented by the quiet, worn figure of Alec Guinness in the 1979 BBC miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Alex Guinness as George Smiley in TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (1979)

Guinness played George Smiley, the novelist’s greatest creation, with precisely the right mix of self-effacing drabness and razor-sharp precision logic. Smiley is a master spy-catcher in part because he seems so unthreatening that you don’t notice he’s on to you until it’s too late. As a character he had something in common, indeed, with his creator’s own narrative style; the author’s plots unfold in painstaking mundanity before suddenly reaching devastating, usually tragic, conclusions that we only recognise in hindsight as utterly inevitable.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was widely regarded as a television masterpiece but also confusing to viewers, with a plot where much is buried in the past. In fact, if you watch it today, it’s not difficult to follow at all… so perhaps the gaps between episodes were to blame.

In any case, that problem was overcome in 2011 by condensing the story to feature-film length for a version starring Gary Oldman as Smiley and an outstanding supporting cast — including Mark Strong, John Hurt, and Benedict Cumberbatch. With memories of Guinness still so vivid, Oldman seemed an unlikely choice, but he transformed himself into Smiley every bit as much as the older actor had. And the physical and spiritual impoverishment of early-1970s England on screen, by then a historical backdrop, was beautifully rendered.

Le Carré’s spies are civil servants rather than 007's, and the production design of the 2011 film perhaps communicated — even better than the BBC series — the idea that their murky little schemes, petty office politics, anxieties and occasional flashes of heroism are the soul of the nation writ small.

Gary Oldman as George Smiley in TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011)

Guinness wasn’t the first Smiley, however. The character had earlier appeared briefly, played by Rupert Davies, in a successful big-screen version of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965), although that movie’s more associated with Richard Burton in the lead.

Over the decade that followed, le Carré films were few — Sidney Lumet’s The Deadly Affair (1967) starred James Mason and was based on the author’s first novel Call for the Dead, while a version of The Looking Glass War in 1970 is now largely forgotten. After the BBC’s Tinker, however, his works were much more frequently mined for both TV and cinema.

Tinker was quickly followed up by TV productions of Smiley’s People (1982) and then A Perfect Spy (1987). Much later, Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston starred in a 2016 miniseries of The Night Manager, before The Little Drummer Girl was adapted in 2018.

Hugh Laurie, Elizabeth Debicki & Tom Hiddleston in THE NIGHT MANAGER (2016)

At the cinema, meanwhile, non-Smiley novels were favoured, perhaps because no-one wanted to risk comparison with Tinker. George Roy Hill was a rather surprising director and Diane Keaton a surprising lead for The Little Drummer Girl (1984), The Russia House (1990) with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, The Tailor of Panama (2001) with Pierce Brosnan, and The Constant Gardener (2005) with Ralph Fiennes, were all well-received critically even if they didn’t reach the heights the BBC had. Our Kind of Traitor (2016) with Ewan McGregor was solid if unspectacular; while A Most Wanted Man (2014) was most notable for being Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last, and fine, performance.

There will surely be more.

Le Carré’s late novels A Delicate Truth and A Legacy of Spies (which features Smiley, though he’s not the focus) have not yet been filmed, and nor has Agent Running in the Field, as it was only published last year. The last of these, in particular, seems tailor-made for the screen, as it’s biting, tense, and bang up-to-date.

We may not get any more tales from John le Carré himself, but we can hope that film and TV will continue giving us new ways to enter his world — a world that’s as relevant now as it was when Alec Guinness first peered through Smiley’s spectacles four decades ago.

Main image: Creator: Kirsty Wigglesworth | Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS