We have been spending, vicariously, a good bit of time with John le Carré in recent months, and also with David Cornwell (1931 – 2020), the man behind that nom de plume. The latter is the subject of The Pigeon Tunnel, a new film by the accomplished documentarian Errol Morris—the title drawn from le Carré’s engaging and highly recommended memoir of the same name. The Pigeon Tunnel is worth a watch – irresistible stories, briskly told – but this interview with Morris by David Marchese is even better than the film. (And once all the tunnels have been traversed, those craving still more can dive into the posthumously published collection of Cornwell’s letters, which, at 700 pages, rewards a judicious use of the index.)
“Write what you know,” is a shopworn cliché, but one that well-applies in this instance. From his mid-twenties through his mid-thirties, Cornwell was a denizen of “the secret world” as an undercover member of the British intelligence services. Stationed principally in Germany, not a bad spot to be during the Cold War, yet across nine decades of this fascinating life, the least exciting part would be found in spy-craft. But those hands-on experiences informed his often brilliant and wildly popular fiction, which, in broad brush, can be described as James Bond—not.
Le Carré’s persona (friends called him David, but we weren’t that close) was shaped by several formative attributes and characteristics. His father, an impossible, irresponsible, intermittently incarcerated con man (as a fictional character his exploits would strain credulity), looms large as an influence—one chapter of The Pigeon Tunnel is well-titled “Son of the Author’s Father.” The erstwhile spy also served his government at the moment when the British intelligence community was rocked by its most embarrassing scandal and, worse, its most unspeakable betrayal. Also notable is that le Carré, married his entire adult life (for seventeen and fifty years, respectively), was also a serial adulterer—about one lover per novel, so it seemed. It is little surprise, then, that his fiction, which reflects a penetrating intelligence, is characterized by deception, betrayal and infidelity. But it also reveals a clear eyed, gloomy realist whose work was fueled by a burning moral indignation.
The hardworking if less than literate staff here at Mid Century Cinema has spent more time with le Carré’s movies than his books, surely to the author’s regret, as he once famously described (with tolerance for a process that he eagerly participated in), that having “your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.” Nevertheless, a few thoughts here, in ascending order of estimation, of those adaptations we have seen, scientifically gathered in the categories of eh, quite good, and marvelous.
Eh:
The Looking Glass War (1970) The Financial Times lauded the novel as “A book of rare and great power.” The New York Times described the film, quite accurately, as “odd, mannered, and unconvincing.” Beef broth would have been an upgrade.
The Tailor of Panama (2001) Despite a very fine cast and the skilled hand of John Boorman at the helm, our notes read that it “feels like a weak rehash of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana”—which it turns out it was. The novel, at least, was intended as an homage. The movie, however, hits standard notes and is limited by characters of shallow motivation.
Quite Good:
The Russia House (1990) Tom Stoppard did the screenplay for this relatively gentle le Carré, which trots the globe appealingly, is very on-brand (key line: “I have to betray my country”), and distinguished by one of Sean Connery’s best performances. The slapped-on Hollywood ending does not detract from this engaging rumination on loyalty.
Our Kind of Traitor (2016) Preposterously plotted, but with a very smart, neo-Hitchcockian set-up and enjoyable and suspenseful throughout. In sum, a fine evening’s entertainment, even if it all does unravel towards the end, which is less anti-Bond and more anti-Carré. Stellan Skarsgård flashes his impressive range and charisma, and gets the movie’s best line. (Sidebar: director Suzanna White shows that the way to solve the problem of the male gaze is not to look away, but to add the female gaze.)
The Constant Gardner (2005) Fernando Meirelles directs Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz in this exceptional suspenser that revisits the best paranoid thrillers of the seventies and even flirts with Antonioni’s The Passenger. As Roger Ebert observed, “his elegant prose and the oblique shorthand of the dialogue shows the writer forcing himself to turn fury into style . . . Its closing scenes are as cynical about international politics and commerce as I can imagine. I would like to believe they are an exaggeration, but I fear they are not. This is one of the year’s best films.”
Marvelous:
The Deadly Affair (1967) Sidney Lumet directs Mr. James Mason (and a party of favorites including Simone Signoret and Harriet Andersson), in an excellent adaptation of le Carré’s first novel, Call of the Dead, which set the mold for much of what would follow. This one has already received the MCC treatment.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (TV mini-series, 1979) Arguably le Carré’s most representative work, this mini-series is, as one of our good friends likes to say, a slow burn, with the first two highly watchable, but not obviously special, installments building momentum towards the almost breathtaking episodes five and six. A clinic in the execution of gripping suspense with barely a dusting of actual violence, TTSS is of course distinguished by the leading performance of Alec Guinness at the top of his game, as seen especially though his interactions with a series of invariably outstanding one off guest players.
A Most Wanted Man (2014) Boy, this is special. Overshadowed at the time by the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, revisiting this one years later reveals a bravura performance in a brilliantly executed film, one that is exceptionally shot and which boasts a very strong, deep cast. With Constant Gardner, this is a film where le Carré’s sense of moral outrage is close to the surface – here expressing revulsion at the post 9-11 American practice of “extraordinary rendition” – and yet it is utterly timeless as well. See this now—Hoffman was one of the great actors of his generation.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) Another one we have written about previously. With Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, and Oskar Werner; directed by Martin Ritt and shot by Oswald Morris. This spectacular achievement and enduring statement of anti-heroism is an irrefutable smackdown of the Hollywood fantasy-factory. (Compare the denouement of this film with that of Steven Spielberg’s very fine but nevertheless flag-waving, feel-good, eager-to-please Bridge of Spies a half-century later.) Spy, his third novel and first to reach the big screen, established le Carré as the poet laureate of the thinking person’s thriller.
Alec Guinness in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
