The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Great War was supposed to end all wars. World War II was supposed to finish the job and put a stop to the Hun threat once and for all. Then the Cold War settled in, like a damp winter day, and it was Germany Germany Germany all over again.

This is the world of John le Carré, of George Smiley, of THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD. It’s always winter here. Disillusionment permeates everything. Spies don’t drive sports cars, win at baccarat, and jump speedboats over islands. In the words of Alec Leamas, the film’s protagonist, “They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.”

Richard Burton is Leamas, Section Chief of MI6’s Berlin bureau. He keeps losing men to Hans-Dieter Mundt, his opposite number in the Stasi. Perhaps it’s time for him to come in from the cold, to take a nice desk job in, say, the Banking Section back at Headquarters. Besides, George Smiley has an idea …

And so begins two hours of weary, bleary, tension. Of technicians who see the world not in shades of gray, but in varying levels of darkness. Of too much alcohol and too much time, of too much conscience or not conscience enough. Richard Burton, at the center of it all, is a world-weary force, a man who has been so long on the job that he can’t even tell if it’s a job any more. He’s magnificent, and the film is a marvel of care and maturity.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD works. It works on every level. I feel weary just thinking about it. I think that’s good.

The Taming of the Shrew

Liz. Dick. A young Michael York. What's not to like?

Quite a lot, actually. While the Zeffirelli TAMING OF THE SHREW looks great with its stunning sets and costumes even Joan Crawford would envy, this movie fails to take flight. I posit two reasons. First, I just couldn't buy Richard Burton's Petruchio. Burton plays Petruchio as a man long on bravado, but I never got the sense that he knew what he was doing or that he possessed the resolution and cruelty that the role requires. Perhaps it was the actor's decision to grin like a monkey throughout the production; it's hard to say. Second, the film takes too much time with its setup and not enough with the actual taming. When the last act shows us the depth of Katherine's retraining, we don't buy it because we didn't get enough of a sense of her sufferings.

I wanted to like THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. I really did. Unfortunately, Zeffirelli's is one of the less satisfying of play's incarnations that I've seen.