The Ipcress File (Film)

A treat to see this again, courtesy of iplayer. And to itemise the pleasures: the very young Michael Caine winning us over from the first shots of him making a proper pot of coffee; the drab, dingy look of 1965 London; the observation of class, with officer types sporting blimpish moustaches, enjoying military bands and valiantly negotiating supermarkets; satirical stuff about bureaucratic forms and clearance procedures (Ooh, you'll never get a CC1!); the amazing range of camera angles, which have us looking over people's shoulders, up at the ceiling, in focus, out of focus, making us feel like we're spying on the spies; John Barry's score, making a memorable motif capture different moods through inventive arrangements; and the use of sound elsewhere, like the humming lights in the garage scene; the whiff of science and technology without the gimmicky gadgets of Bond; and the super-smooth villainy which stays just this side of nutty caricature. Well, that's plenty of items. I still don't quite get why Mr Bad Guy is allowed to stroll around London with his heavies with impunity: perhaps they have nothing concrete on him?  No one seems to object to doing deals with terrorists - but presumably that's part of the 'we're all dirty in this trade' message. And why wasn't the Caine character just bumped off? Perhaps he was useful for experimental data. Or something. Anyway, it's about style, not plot, and The Ipcress File oozes with it. Like Le Carre, it gives us a sardonic and searching picture of the Brit establishment groping about in a post-imperial world. Years since I read Deighton, but I remember being addicted to Game, Set and Match once upon a time. Must make a return visit to that, too.

Book: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I reread this recently having seen Thomas Alfredson’s recent film version. I thought the film captured the brooding style and atmosphere of the novel very effectively, but I’d defy anyone to work out the story from the film alone (even following the great TV series with Alec Guinness is quite a mental workout). The plot has been called labyrinthine, but that’s the wrong cliché. Reading the book is like putting together a jigsaw, though without having the overall picture in front of us. This in fact is one of the great qualities of Le Carré, who respects the intelligence of the reader and doesn’t over-explain (Spooks this is not).

Two pieces of evidence (Rikki Tarr’s story and the calamitous Prideaux mission to Czechoslovakia) indicate that intelligence is being passed from the British Secret Service to Russia. George Smiley, victim of new management, is approached in retirement and asked by a ministerial representative to investigate. The curious thing is that the story shouldn’t work. It’s a whodunnit, but we can’t care very much who did it as the suspects only make brief appearances and are generally an unsympathetic bunch. We can’t follow the trail of evidence very clearly, as this consists of night after night of analysis of intelligence data, which we are mercifuly spared (most of the detective action consists of Smiley reading documents in a hotel). And yet the novel is diabolically gripping. What holds us are the set-pieces, the rhythm of the writing, and above all the sense of espionage and betrayal spreading like the London fog. Lady Ann’s betrayal of Smiley is a rather obvious extension of the theme, but then there is the schoolboy learning to spy, Peter Guillam’s doubts about his partner, even the clumsy lovers trying to make a discreet entrance to a house in Oxford. Subterfuge has become the usual way of things. Beyond the terror of a world where trust has vanished is the terror of real violence in the shadows (we are passingly told about networks being wrapped up and have to decide whether to let our imaginations dwell on the implications of this or not). Cold War suspicion is as omnipresent as the darkness and rain that are the characters’ natural habitat. The values at stake have disappeared into weary worldliness and the patois of the officer class. Even the mole’s apologia turns out to be little more than a string of tired platitudes. The novel is a brilliant portrait of postwar, post-imperial Britain as a dreary spectre of its former self.

Films have no obligation to follow books with exactitude (why should they?), and I thought Alfredson’s variations were inventive: the arrest of Prideaux was suitably tense, and interestingly different to both book and series. I liked the edge of real menace in Gary Oldman’s Smiley, and the thrilling atmosphere of key scenes (Guillam’s visit to the archive may be the most exciting piece of document retrieval on film). One change which was puzzling, though, was Prideaux’s harshness to Jumbo at the end. I take it this is meant as tough love, as he wants to save the boy from the spying path, but the understanding between teacher and pupil at the end of the novel seems to represent an important hint of hope and decency after the miasma of deceit.