‘The Spy Who Came in From The Cold’ or — Carré on Spying?

(No spoilers)

Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) wants to come in from the cold. He’s the MI6 station chief for West Berlin and he’s just witnessed one of his operatives gunned down at a Berlin checkpoint. Alec wants in from the cold. Control wants him to stay out in the cold. It’s not that Alec doesn’t like the cold, he hates it, but it might also be all that gives his life meaning and context. There’s a chance that, without the cold, Alec might not exist at all. Warm him up and he might melt, leaving nothing behind at all.

So Control gives Alec a mission: pretend to defect in order to supply the East with carefully prearranged information that will incriminate one of their top operatives. To do this Alec must pretend to have become a broke, embittered, alcoholic agent with a grudge and, hence, a prime candidate for defection. We suspect Alec might not have much trouble playing this with authenticity.

As part of his cover Alec gets a job at a library of paranormal literature where he begins a romance with a young Communist called Nan. After Alec is released from prison for violently assaulting a grocer he is approached by a series of men in suits claiming to work for Link, a prisoner outreach program. Link can offer Leamas money in exchange for his “memoirs”.

We then follow Leamas as he is passed up the chain of command of the East German intelligence system and through various forms of interrogation as they attempt to extract the “truth” from him. But just what does Leamas know? And, more importantly, what might Leamas be ignorant of himself?

‘The Spy Who Came in From The Cold’ (1965) demonstrates with unflinching brutality the murderous hypocrisy of nations and the sovereign state. That national differences are a lie and these lies must be protected so they can continue to hide the darkness underneath. But what happens to those who exist within this darkness?

So it is thematically fitting that Leamas is assigned to a paranormal library because the parallels between the paranormal and espionage are explicit; sad little men, pathetic creatures existing in hidden underworlds chasing specters purely of their own making. It’s why the worlds of espionage and the paranormal have nothing to do with “truth” and are simply arenas for ego, power and abuse to be exercised. Both are theatres constructed for nothing more than manipulation and the desperate need to role play. The end result of such delusion is always self-destruction, both physical, moral and psychological.

Yet these are ghosts we are dealing with, specifically ghosts from WW II, ghosts the British Empire can’t suppress. When it finally hit me what ‘The Spy Who Came in From The Cold’ was actually “about”, what the final reveal was I wasn’t quite prepared for the shock. This is not simply a case of Britain having to play as dirty as its enemies (a relatively banal statement for a movie anyway) but that it might be worse, much worse. All nations have something in common and, often, it is a form of evil. Listen to Leamas’ chilling, final monologue for proof of that.

All of this terror (and we are dealing with forms of terror here) is kept masterfully contained, restrained, to the point of the mundane. Leamas’ world is grey, emotion is a liability, all terms and language are impersonal — Link, Control — and we begin to understand where the cold is coming from. This film is as sparse, grey and impersonal as an empty cell.

Not that the film itself doesn’t dazzle visually. The black and white cinematography is often striking, especially during the scene at club Pussywillow where director Martin Ritt expertly fractures and fragments visual space, highlighting how we can never be quite sure what we’re looking at or where the “truth” might dwell.

‘The Spy Who Came in From The Cold’ is an excellent thriller although it is not an easy watch. It is too nihilistic for that, but it is captivating watching that black tide slowly rising to the surface. The conclusion is genuinely terrifying in its implications, yet there’s a deeper, darker secret Leamas is carrying that’s even more unsettling; that unlike God, revolution, politics, right and wrong, good or evil, that there is only thing that truly exists… and that is nothing at all.

Now isn’t that a nice thought to take the chill off your bones? Keep warm, folks.