The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

"By coincidence, two Martin Ritt films are being released on Tuesday by two different companies," notes Dave Kehr in the New York Times: "the 1965 anti-thriller The Spy Who Came In From the Cold arrives from the Criterion Collection in a typically well-appointed edition, and the 1972 family drama Sounder comes in a bare-bones version from Koch Vision.... Like so many filmmakers who racked up awards and earned sterling reviews during their careers, [Ritt] seems to have been forgotten by history, perhaps because his movies were so deeply embedded in the times in which they were made. They draw on or react against contemporary events to such a degree that, once their contexts have been taken away, they no longer mean what they once did." Spy "means less without its popular foil. Released the same year as Thunderball, the fourth of the phenomenally successful James Bond films starring Sean Connery, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold consistently positions itself as a rebuke to the glamorous, action movie ethos of the Bond films: no fancy gadgets or bikini-clad beauties here, only a pinched and dingy universe in which the moral compass spins without direction."

Updated through 11/29.

"Espionage was such a gift to cinema," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC: "once ordinary urban locations became electrified with international import, and the criminal schmucks of noir became romanticized existentialist figures, lost in the patterns of political force like mice in a maze. No movie better pegs this vibe than The Spy Who Came in from the Cold."

"I just saw it for the first time, and what can I say?" Josef Braun: "I'm startled. Ritt, who also made Hud (63), Hombre (67) and Norma Rae (79), may not have a reputation as a master stylist, or even a master of anything in particular, but here, in collaboration with cinematographer Oswald Morris, production designer Tambi Larsen and editor Anthony Harvey in particular, he produced something of marvelous texture and specificity. It's transfixing."

The question the film poses, argues Jamie S Rich at DVD Talk, is "does it mean anything at all to be out there fighting the Cold War, or do the wheels just continually grind on? Meaning vs meaninglessness is of the utmost importance. The lead cloak-and-dagger man of the film, British covert agent Alec Leamas (Richard Burton), is regularly asked to state his beliefs. He says he has none, be it in God or Karl Marx or Santa Claus, and the answer is always met with skepticism. One of his enemies, the Communist agent Fiedler (Jules and Jim's Oskar Werner), even goes so far as to ask how a man can sleep at night without some kind of philosophy to keep him warm."

"Burton's acting style has been attacked many times over the years, but in the right role, he can be tremendously effective," writes Clark Douglas at DVD Verdict. "I'm not sure that I have ever seen a better performance from Burton than the one he gives here."

"Another excellent Criterion release of a classic film - placed in their higher price tier... but worth every penny." Gary W Tooze at DVD Beaver.

Online viewing tip. "The sex, used and abused by nations." Criterion has the trailer.

Update, 11/26: "Ritt perhaps goes too far in capturing the somber, heady tone of [John] le Carré's novel, losing some suspense as a result," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "But he and Burton get the dry wit of le Carré's work just right; many of the film's best lines are pressed through Burton's perpetual fatigue, like 'If ever I have to break your neck, I promise to do it with a minimum of force,' or 'She offered me free love. At the time, that was all I could afford.' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold introduced a new spy archetype: the man (almost) without a country."

Update, 11/29: "Ultimately, the film collapses under its own unilluminating gravitas; its dreariness becomes not an antidote to Ian Fleming's flash, but its broken-mirror reflection." Still, Fernando F Croce, writing at Slant, finds this to be a "fabulous package for a frigid Cold War chestnut."

Posted by dwhudson at November 25, 2008 12:43 PM