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  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

    For those who don't know this is a version of Charles Dickens' famous story with Michael Caine as Scrooge and the muppets in most of the other roles. It's one of my favourite Christmas movies! Part of what makes it great is how the muppets do what they do best with songs, dance and jokes, but Caine plays everything straight as if he was on a theatre stage. "God bless us, every one!"

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    Speaking of Caine..

    MY GENERATION (2017)

    Documentary about sixties swinging London narrated by Michael Caine. There’s a few old interviews of Sir Michael and some of his chums, plus contemporary off-camera chat with icons of the age such as Twiggy, David Bailey, Roger Daltrey, Paul McCartney and Marianne Faithful. It doesn’t really tell you much you didn’t already know – unless, of course, you don’t know because you’ve never seen any other similar documentaries. It starts with all the drab 1950s British social class system, goes into the angry young man and woman period of the early sixties, through the mid-decade counter culture revolution and into the decline and fall, tactfully avoiding the real hedonists and not even touching on what it felt like to be an ordinary guy or gal on the street. It’s all very well Michael Caine discussing the sixties with his other successful pals, but what about the people who really lived and worked and grew up in it? That’d be a real story to tell, this one just regurgitates old stories and anecdotes we’ve already heard, dresses them up in pretty colours and adds music of the time, but not at the right times. Interesting, but not deep enough to be relevant. 

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Yeah. I got that out on DVD a while ago. It does sort of put the idea out that Swinging London was a small subset of London and not really anywhere else. The late 60s Carry On Camping intriguingly contradicts that notion, as our mates Sid and Bernie seek to sabotage a 'cool' festival taking place at an adjacent camping site, with the implicit assumption that the predominant working class audience would approve of our mates putting one over the fey and phoney hippy crowd, presumably fans of Strawberry Fields et al.

    Caine was a bit older than that crowd... his flatmate Terence Stamp once indiscreetly suggesting in an interview much later that Caine was actually older than he made out by raising his hand a bit when his age was suggested. Which means he must be really old now. Perhaps Caine is like Dalton, it suggested in a TV Times magazine letter in the late 80s as The Living Daylights was premiered from a schoolboy contemporary of his echoing another letter that our Bond pal was more like 47 when he took over as Bond than early 40s as claimed. This point has never, ever been taken up by anyone ever since.

    I recall the days when the movie premiere of a Bond movie would make the front pages of TV Times, with a programme on ITV devoted to it, with interviews with cast members. So it was with For Your Eyes Only, not sure if that happened after that. OP had a special documentary devoted to past Bond movies to crowd out the upcoming NSNA, although it was also a 21st anniversary thing.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • JoshuaJoshua Posts: 1,138MI6 Agent

    I saw 'The Eagle Has Landed' the other day. Unfortunately tiredness meant I fell asleep at the part where Michael Caine met the American officer.


    I did see an interesting film last night called 'Peanut Butter Falcon'. This is not my usual type of film but I fount it to be good and I recommend it to anyone who has not seen it before.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent

    Kursk/The command (2018)

    Thsi movie is about the disaster in the year 2000 when Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents sea. It shows what was done to save the survivors of the explosion, what their families experienced and what the survivors in the sunken submarine may have exprienced. The movie is directed by Thomas Vinterberg. The Danish director made Mads Mikkelsen known internationally in "The Hunt" and later made the excelent "Another round" with him. The main cast is European, but not Russian. Matthias Schoenaerts plays one of the men in the sunken sub. He's from Belgium and you may have seen him in movies like Red Sparrow, "A hidden life" and "The Danish girl". His wife is played by Lea Seydoux, who in my opinion delivers one of her best performances in this movie. She was pregnant while filming it and that's used in the movie. Colin Firth plays commadore David Russell, the British navy officer who organised the non-Russian efforts to save the Kursk crew. The movie was based on Russell's book. The accident happened not long after Putin became president of Russia and early scripts include him. Putin was written out of the movie, possibly to avoid the movie company becoming the target of hackers who definitely wouldn't be working for Russian secret service.

    I think the movie is good and well worth being watched. The actiong is really good and Videberg tells the story well, especially the claustrophobic scenes inside the sunken submarine.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    The king's man (2021)

    I'm so brave I watched this movie in a cinema! 😁

    This is a prequel to the Kingsman movies set before and during WWI. It's directed and co-written by Mathew Vaughn, It stars Ralphe Fiennes as the nobleman Oxford, Dijimon Hounsou, Gemma Arterton and many others. I think a period setting fits the Kingsman consept well and the Kingsman movies really needed an origin story unlike many other franchises. In some ways this is the best Kingsman movie, partly because Vaughn has toned down the gross-out humour and focuses more on story. If he tones down his overactive camera tricks this bodes well for his chances as a future Bond director. I don't know if it increases his chanses, but Vaughn is now working on a movie about a "the world's greatest spy'Argylle' as he's caught up in a globe-trotting adventure". It's intended to start a franchise and the movie even stars Henry Cavill!

    This movie certainly is fun and inventive, but it occationally finds the gravitas too. But it's ironic in a movie that wants to be a pacifist movie about a pacifist the heroes constantly works to involve more countries in WWI!

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    The Hunchback of Notre Dame

    The 1930s version with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara.

    This is the kind of film that's never shown on telly these days - no idea why, it's brilliant. Hardly a dull moment in it, some great aerial shots of medieval Paris. Surprisingly topical too, perhaps making a point about itinerant Jews in 1930s Europe and comparing their lot with that of the Romanian gypsies depicted here, faced with barriers thrown up against their entrance into various countries. Some mixed messages about whether they're all as lovely as. young Maurueen, who plays Esmerelda, or actually a horde of thieves and vagabonds as their reputation suggests. Much comment on the fickle nature of the public, and the supposed attractions of the printing press (i.e. internet) for forming opinion, espoused by the French King who is made out to be a loveable, liberal old boy.

    I recall this film being a real afternoon's entertainment on telly back in my youth, now you have to seek it out on DVD. I recommend you do so, the direction really is quite up to the mark, it's a lot more sophisticated than The Scarlet Pimpernel, shot a bit earlier and with similar settings, but dogged by slow direction sometimes and an absence of soundtrack (though

    I do love that film, not least because of its three central players, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey.)

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    HOT ENOUGH FOR JUNE (1964)

    Following up @caractacus potts splendid review [https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1032172#Comment_1032172] I thought I’d add my penny’s worth. I too am also visiting the movies on Mike Richardson’s list of fifty must-sees from his Guns, Girls and Gadgets. It’s a great read by the way. I had not seen Hot Enough for June for decades.  

    Dirk Bogarde encapsulated the English fish-out-of-water better than anyone at this period of his career. He’d played it so often in the fifties, starting with Doctor in the House, that he almost typecast himself. Luckily Joseph Losey’s brilliantly accomplished The Servant, one of the best British films of the sixties, stopped all that. Unfortunately, Bogarde still needed money, so despite reservations he teamed up again with the Doctor production team of Sidney and Betty Box and director Ralph Thomas for this slimline stroll of suspense and farce set in Eastern Europe.

    Bogarde plays Nicholas Whistler, an unemployed writer handpicked by Robert Morley’s ponderous pontificator Colonel Cunliffe to be sent as a courier to Prague where he’s to collect secret stolen information. Cunliffe neglects to inform Whistler he’s a spy, preferring to let the hapless writer believe he’s landed a managerial position with an international firm of glass-blowers. Whistler’s given a huge salary (£2000, huge in 1964) plus expenses and sent to Prague with the password ‘Hot Enough for June’ and orders to exchange copies of a Czechoslovak guide book. Morley’s so off hand about it all, you almost believe him. The famous Hitchcockian McGuffin – here, secrets in guide books – obviously proves Whistler’s undoing. Not only does he know nothing about glass, he makes a fairly average spy, finding himself unable to locate his contact while not seeming to realise the situation he’s got himself involved in or its dangers. Cunliffe does; he doesn’t even expect him to come back: “There are openings all the time,” he cryptically tells his new employee.

    The film is prefaced by a short scene during which John Le Mesurier deposits a bagful of personal possessions to a clerk. They all appear to be the tools of a working spy’s trade, including an automatic pistol, several passports and a shoe with a hollow heel. The clerk stores the bag and its goods in a locker marked OO7, but turns the card so it reads DECEASED. Exactly how the producers got away with this three-second snippet I’ll never know. Cubby Broccoli’s all-seeing-eye must have been temporarily blinded. In fact, the early familiarities do not end there. Whistler’s interview is in a building whose plaque reads STANDARD EXPORTS LTD – clearly a nod to Ian Fleming’s Universal Exports – and the secretary’s office is set up almost exactly like Moneypenny’s in reverse. Even the secretary shares some of Lois Maxwell’s candour. Cunliffe’s office is a bigger, brighter version of M’s, a huge desk, big windows; it’s all tremendously homely, very familiar, as if the filmmakers really are trying to rip off James Bond.

    Padua stands in for Prague, but we don’t really notice. The humour, which had been light, starts to get laboured as Whistler encounters several red herrings at the glass factory. Luckily he’s aided by a sexy chauffeur, Vlasta Simenova, played with her usual slinky sensual skill by the beautiful Sylvia Koscina, who featured in several Euro-Spy thrillers of the sixties. She’s delightful here swapping comparisons between British and Soviet society with her attractive passenger. Their dinner scene jars, the farcical element once more proving a downfall. The scene starts elegantly. We’ve learnt Vlasta is an agent of the security services, but she’s ambitious and wants to entrap Whistler herself. She attempts to sit at a table which isn’t bugged – the microphone is in the floral display, a neat ruse reimagined from Fleming’s short story For Your Eyes Only and similar to the one we see in the 1981 film version – and later she pours wine on the recording system to foil her superiors. While I understand entirely what’s happening here, and the humorous intent, a little more sophistication of the kind Bond films display would elevate this scene to such a higher plain. As it stands, tipping the glass is treated as a heavy-handed comic highlight when it should be a gentle, knowing, enigmatic twinkle of fingers, eyes and lips.

    Much better is Whistler’s seduction of Vlasta, or is it the other way around?, the double entendres coming fast and loose and the sex sealed with an erotic kiss through a satin curtain, the analogy clear: the wall really is being torn down. After love, Bogarde’s character says exactly that. Some discreet rear-view and hip-high nudity is eye opening for an A-certificate in 1964. The two agents make a very sexy couple.

    Unfortunately, Vlasta’s father is the head of the Czech Security Service. Colonel Simenova is played by a gruff and quite excellent Leo McKern. The scenes where he succinctly puts down his subordinates contrasts delightfully with the off-hand old school tie banter of Morley and Le Mesurier. Both chiefs are dealing with incompetence. When they meet in the British Embassy, Cunliffe flying out fearing he’s lost another agent, the two actors come into their own, drinking whiskey and dismissing the plight of their underlings with the toss of an ice cube. They are not dissimilar. Even their offices both feature a map with flags to represent the locations of their agents.

    Whistler’s almost arrested, but escapes with some ingenuity. With Vlasta’s assistance, he goes on the run, finally making it to the British Embassy and safety. These scenes share an equal burden of suspense and humour and the film loses its way a bit, uncertain whether to be earnest or funny, eventually occupying the middle ground and not succeeding being either. Whistler is certainly more adaptable and capable than he initially appeared, but the situations the screenwriter puts him into skew the serious espionage towards spare jollity. Getting dressed up in Tyrolese mountain britches doesn’t help. Lionel Davidson’s original novel The Night of Wenceslas was deadly serious fare and he must have been tremendously disappointed. The film ends on a pleasant note of reconciliation for all. The McGuffin has been conveniently forgotten by everyone.

    I enjoyed Hot Enough for June without ever being enthralled. It’s a solid product of the era, one of the earliest Bond spoofs, along with Carry On Spying, and is most interesting for alluding to James Bond, yet making no conscious effort to impersonate him, a liberal attitude to sex excepted. It’s a traditional affair with willing performances from the four leads and might have worked better as a more traditional espionage film. The humour works best when it’s in the dialogue. As soon as Bogarde is asked to pull faces and spit out passwords while numerous Czech’s admire his travel guide, you sense the film’s out of its depth, both as comedy and as thriller.

     

     

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    you probably already knew more about the history of these actors than I did, but did you find having Guns, Girls and Gadgets helped you better appreciate the film?

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    I don't think it did. The book is heavy on location, casting and production details including some historical context and very interesting because of it. However, it lacks an overall critical eye. There is little or no attempt to offer an authorial opinion on the films. There are short sections for each facet of a film and appreciative words are used where appropriate, usually by referencing other sources. I believe Mike's been extremely careful to avoid giving an opinion on how successful or not he personally considers each film. For instance, there's no indication Mike read the novel The Night of Wenceslas on which this movie is based. If he did, he doesn't offer any extracts or insight to compare the film and book, or suggest it is good or bad adaptation. There are Trivia and Awards sections, so you can judge some of the industry reactions to each movie. It's a very balanced book but can be a bit overwhelming at times. I perhaps might have preferred to see more evidence regarding the cultural impact of these movies, and he does touch on this, but at over 700 pages, the book is more an in-depth referencing guide and not a critical analysis. For that, we can always go elsewhere.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    The man who never was (1956)


    Since there's a new movie about Operation Mincemeat (Operation Mincemeat - Wikipedia) I was inspired to watch the first movie about this bizzare secret operation dreamt up by Ian Fleming himself. The 1956 movie is based on a book by  Captain Ewen Montagu, RNVR, the man who planned the operation. But because of dramatic reasons and details that were secret until 1998 many aspects aren't hsitorically correct. However the raw bones of the operation are correct. Particularely like the scene in the morgue where the clothes, identity papers and personal effects of the "officer" are placed on the dead body while we can hear the bombing of London above. The many made up scenes don't bother me at all because they work so well.

    There's some great trivia about this movie:

    • The real Montsagu has a camo as a vice admiral
    • Winson Churchill is voiced by a pre-stardom Peter Sellers!
    • The submarine is the same one that was used in the real operation.
    • The story about someone looking for a spy that doesn't exist inspired the famous Hitchcock movie "North by northwest"
    • In the early stages of D-day a corpse was found on a glider carrying detailed allied plans for the invasion of France. The plans were real, but the Germans were convinced they were fake and planted because of their experience with Operation Mincemeat.

    I enjoyed the movie a lot and I reccomend watching it. You can find it here: The Man Who Never Was 1956 - Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame, Stephen Boyd, Josephine Griffin - Bing video



  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    so what did Connery do in his spare time at the height of BondMania?

    The Hill, 1965

    directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, etc). This film'll give you something to shout "Attica! Attica! Attica!" about.

    Connery plays tank commander Sgt Major Joe Roberts, sentenced to military prison for punching an officer and disobeying an order. He felt his men were being sent on a suicide mission, and indeed his men were all killed after a different Sgt replaced him for the mission. Now he is being punished for cowardice and insubordination.

    The prison is said to be in the Libyan desert, but the location is actually in the south of Spain, similar enough climate. The prisoners are forced to exercise in the extreme heat all day long, to crush their spirit and teach them discipline. For punishment, a manmade hill has been built in the middle of the yard which prisoners must run up and over again and again until they drop, then roused by a bucketful of water and forced to continue. The film opens with a spectacular long helicopter shot showing a prisoner collapse on the hill, then pulling out to reveal the prison yard and the hundreds of prisoners exercising as the various characters are introduced.

    The thing is, from what I'm reading, Lumet was forcing his actors in real life to endure much the same extreme physical punishment as the fictional authorities were inflicting on the prisoners within the film.

    Fifteen minutes in, after establishing the situation, new prisoner Connery arrives and is singled out for particular humiliation because of the nature of his crime. His cellmates are drunkards and scrappers and thieves, he's the only one who's challenged the command structure. His cellmates suffer alongside him merely by the chance of proximity, and initially resent him for it.

    The same day Connery arrives, a new guard also arrives, played by Ian Hendy (Dr Keel from the first season of The Avengers), and is put in charge of Connery and his cellmates. A real bastard, he drives the weakest cellmate to his death, and this is where the general prison population begin to turn against their guards.

    Best performance is from Ossie Davis, the one black prisoner in the cell, who endures racist abuse from both guards and cellmates until he strips off his uniform and declares he is henceforth a civilian and the military have no right to speak to him.

    The ending is left to our imaginations in the middle of what should be a conventionally moral resolution, as defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory, yet it all seems inevitable in this sadistic and claustrophobic world. The chance of a happy ending was an illusion, safer not to hope.


    This is an incredible escape from typecasting for Connery. Instead of enjoying a glamourous life carrying out missions on behalf of Her Majesty's Secret Service, here he is a career soldier declaring these rules and discipline should have gone out with Queen Victoria, challenging the official authorities and inciting mob riot. He brings his usual alpha male presence yet employs it for anti-authoritarian subversion. And he skipped the Goldfinger premiere to make this film!

    The look of this film is about as far from a BondFilm as you could get. There is not a note of music, and dialog is often muffled by the ambient noise of the hundreds of prisoners continuously exercising in the background. Film is in black and white, with extreme unflattering close ups of the characters, drenched in sweat and covered in flies. And though the location is very large, as explored in the opening shot, it is essentially a one set play.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    @caractacus potts You can read my review of The Hill here. It's a great movie. https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1009586#Comment_1009586

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    thanks for pointing out your own review @chrisno1

    I seem to recall when we were discussing Fathom you said your folks had a home in the south of Spain. This film was shot in an old fort in Málaga, did you ever have a chance to visit the real life location?

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    There are dozens of old forts in Malaga province. I don't think it was filmed at one of three in Malaga city itself. If I have been there, I didn't realise it. I have a feeling it might be the interiors which were filmed in the fort. The exterior set was built in Capo de Gato, I believe. It's now a national park.

  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff

    I saw ETERNALS last night, and my view is the polar opposite of Gymkata's. I thought it was terrible--an absolute mess. The characters are paper-thin, their powers are all things we've seen in other and better characters (one character is even called "Superman" at one point, and it's easy to see why), and the casting seemed to be to just check off boxes. It was also hard to figure out what the hell is going on--the movie bounces back in forth in time to explain how this group got together and how they broke up and why they need to get back together and who killed who, blah, blah, blah. I agree with Gymkata about the lack of fun part. . .it takes its own mythology with deep seriousness (um, the last Spider-Man movie was so good because it had fun with everything) and it goes on for more than two and a half hours. "Eternal" seems to describe the time I spent in front of the TV.

    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • Asp9mmAsp9mm Over the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,483MI6 Agent
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  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent
    edited January 2022

    We have a movie star among us! 😄

    How nice for you, ASP9mm. The movie and your performance wasn't stoopid at all!

  • Asp9mmAsp9mm Over the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,483MI6 Agent
    ..................Asp9mmSIG-1-2.jpg...............
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent

    How did you get in the movie?

    Did you get to stalk any of the other stars?

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Just dropping in to point out what fans of The Hill already know - that one of its stars if Roy Kinnear, dad of Rory 'Bill Tanner' Kinnear.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff

    VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE. Dumb, silly, even a touch nasty. . .but unlike the oh-so-serious ETERNALS, this is a comic-book movie that knows it's a comic-book movie and so it maintains a sense of fun. Good movie to watch with your brain in neutral.

    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    ha! I thought the name looked familiar, but obviously could not be our Bill Tanner. He's the short chubby black marketeer in the gang, looking at his wikipedia entry I've seen him in a few things, mostly comedies like Help! and Willy Wonka.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Re Roy Kinnear, @caractacus potts - he was a character actor who generally always played the same character and did it very well - sort of comedic, bumbling, slightly nervous or shifty but that in itself doesn't convey it. He would have been in a good few episodes of The Avengers, maybe The Saint too. Also in the long-running Dick Emery Show, as the 'father' to Emery's gormless skinhead son, where each sketch tended to feature said son saying 'I think I got it wrong again, Dad!'

    Never a young looking or fit looking actor, Kinnear died on the set of a Musketeers sequel in the aftermath of a horse accident, when originally one thought it was a death due to ill health. Sadly, Rory Kinnear's family has had its fair share of untimely deaths, as he recently wrote a moving piece in The Guardian newspaper about the death of his sister in a care facility, due to Covid, around the time the Government were having drinks parties at the height of lockdown. You can read it online.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    thanks @Napoleon Plural I do like it when I begin to recognise these character actors who reappear in all the shows and movies of the era, and I appreciate when folks point them out. Funny how I can watch some of these a half dozen times before I realise I've seen some actor someplace before, then I look at wikipedia or imdb and turns out I've seen them in dozens of things!

    and in another 50 years I'll learn to recognise the actors who are working today...

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,702MI6 Agent

    The green knight (2021)

    I'm going to cheat and quote IMDB on the plot: An epic fantasy adventure based on the timeless Arthurian legend, "The Green Knight" tells the story of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel), King Arthur's reckless and headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers in what becomes a deeper journey to define his character and prove his worth in the eyes of his family and kingdom by facing the ultimate challenger.

    This isn't an action-fantasy blockbuster. It's more an art film full of symbolism, myth and unusual and striking visuals. It's a challenging and rewarding movie to watch. Dev Patel is very good in the lead. He plays brash, imature, honourable, brooding and heroic equally well. In a straight historical medival movie I would have problems with the casting of a ethnically Indian actor, but this is the middle ages of myth, magic and fantasy and I donæ tmind. If EON choses a non-white Bond next time I hope it's Dev Patel. He's a great actor, the right age and build and I like his look.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    WHERE THE SPIES ARE (1966)

    Following the huge stateside success of Goldfinger and the excitement about all things spy as the Bond-craze took off, film makers were looking for material they could adapt into light-hearted espionage movies. The most obvious of these are Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File, Donald Hamilton’s The Silencers and Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise. There were others too, including The Man from UNCLE television show, and more serious fare such as Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.

    A literary series still in its foundling stage in 1964 was Jason Love, written by James Leasor, whose first novel became Passport to Oblivion. Leasor was not an unknown writer, but astutely following Eon’s lead, he saw an opportunity to enter the espionage market and create an urbane hero, whose adventures were globetrotting, suspenseful and cinematically appealing. The first Jason Love novel was a well described actioner taking place in Iran and Canada, featuring intrigue, gadgets, fights, gun battles and torture. It was well reviewed and sold decent copy, appealing to various movie executives before directors / producers / screenwriters Val Guest and Wolf Mankiewicz got their hands on it. Their intention wasn’t to spoof James Bond or create an imitation of him, but make a faithful representation of Leasor’s novel and his hero.

    It is worth noting that while the movie does feature some tropes of the kind we are familiar with from OO7, these, as well as some less expected images do in the majority feature in Leasor’s own writings: there are gadgets, passwords, contacts and double-crosses, Jason Love is a novice spy, a gentleman lover and a man who shuns violence and the tricks of his adopted trade. The film stays remarkably close to the narrative of the novel and is much the better for it.

    Iran was considered unreliable for filming in the sixties, so the action is supplanted to Beirut, which still has a suitably sleazy middle-eastern air to it. The movie begins in a Soviet briefing centre where an MI6 defector explains the gadgets MI6 agents are issued with, including poison pens, flash-light rings and code books. We meet Rosser, who in the novel is the unnamed agent K. Played by Cyril Cusack, Rosser / K is a older, slightly nervy man, who remains calm under pressure. After sending a telegram, he’s kidnapped by two enemy agents in the lobby of his hotel, taken to the Roman ruins at Baalbek where he attempts to escape using the flash-light ring. This is a neat gadget which has a smidgeon of authenticity to it. Rosser is shot, although his superiors in London don’t know that. Missing his last communication, they simply think he’s gone off grid and decide to send an agent to Lebanon to contact him.

    Times are hard at this version of MI6. John Le Mesurier plays MacGillivray, the ‘M’ of the story, and he’s a frustrated, diffident, civil servant, cutting a solid, traditional look in pinstripes and waist coats. Le Mesurier usually only had small supporting roles in this kind of film, but he’s very prominent here, central to Jason Love’s recruitment and explaining the background of the mission. He has a neat turn of phrase as well. At one point Jason Love suggests he’s not cut out to be ‘Superman,’ “Just as well,” replies MacGillivray without a pause, “that sort of exhibitionism tends to get you killed.”

    Jason Love, as epitomised by David Niven, carries a similar air of insouciance. He’s persuaded to undertake the simple task on the promise the Service can find him a rare 1930s Cord motor car. Love may be a country doctor, but he’s also an expert on Cord automobiles, which he considers the finest cars ever made. He drives one, the last of its kind, and later on his knowledge and enthusiasm helps him identify the men who assassinated K. He’s not a great spy, although his military training helps. He’s very disdainful of the briefcase of tricks, the poison pen and the tiny radioactive transmitter inserted into his tooth which, when activated by removal will disrupt any localised electronic equipment. This last eventually comes in handy at the film’s climax, but I did wonder about the health of poor Dr Love’s teeth.

    David Niven is a touch too old to play this sort of hero. I rather fancy Omar Sharif might have graced it better. Nevertheless, Niven contributes all the attributes one would expect. He’s good looking, suave, easy on the eye and tongue and ear, he’s more than competent. The performance is very similar to the one he gave in The Pink Panther as Sir Charles Lytton, a role not a million miles away in its foundation. He takes the material seriously when needed, despatches villains effectively and has the charm to seduce Francoise Dorleac’s beautiful double-agent. He’s able to slum it too, accompanying Nigel Davenport’s hard drinking Parkington to the Shahnwa nightclub. Davenport’s good as the permanently jaundiced alcoholic. A cynic and a bull, Parkington prefers to shoot first and this results in him, well, getting shot.

    There’s a clear class barrier established here. MacGillivray represents the upper classes, pushing pens and people around the world, like pins on a map, almost without a care. Jason Love is the middle class aspirational, swayed by a little comfort, easily pleased, willing, able, but not especially sensible. Parkington is the hard working, poor-man’s alternative, stuck in a job he fell into, under pressure and failing. This man can’t even best Dr Love in a fight. Dorleac’s Vikki, being French, displays a modern classless grace.

    A magazine model and seductress, she meets Love at Rome Airport during his stopover – although it isn’t clear why this should be – and the two share a lovely, witty, believable seduction scene, where Love’s, or Niven’s if you will, gentlemanly behaviour stops the intense amor. When he decides against making love to Vikki, Jason Love mutters: “The things I do for England.” This predates Sean Connery’s line in You Only Live Twice where he deliberately continues his seduction of an enemy agent. The behavioural difference and the pathos is marked, establishing Jason Love as a non-Bond impersonation. Naturally though, this endears him to Vikki. Love also senses the attraction. At the airport, he rebooks his flight to Beirut and then watches as the original plane explodes in a ball of fire. The ringing telephone, unanswered in Vikki’s room speaks volumes for their sudden unrequited affections. Scenes like this are rare in the sixties spy genre and should be lauded. One thing Where the Spies Are does well is to stay grounded.

    There’s an assassination afoot. King Faroud is visiting Beirut. The ruler of an unnamed Arab state, Faroud’s oil is vital to commercial British enterprises and the Soviets plan to destabilise his country, throwing the British out. This strand of the plot hints at old colonial prejudices, that the world is changing and the British are being left behind. When Vikki tells Love she’s betrayed him, he looks stupefied, she has to explain that the world is changing, that spies and spying is a business for professionals. Britain’s club of amateur ruling classes is fading as fast as a Cord motor car. Jason Love still has enough affection for his own Mother Country to continue on in Beirut and prevent the murder Rosser / K had uncovered. The JFK inspired public assassination sequence is the closest we get to the silliness of the spy spoof as Niven runs blindly around a Roman fortress, knocking out gunman, interfering in Vikki’s model shoot and escaping with the aid of a fortuitously arriving helicopter.

    The film loses its way a bit once Love is captured by the Russians, who have covertly arrived on a Aeroflot Peace Plane. The enemy agents include the convincing Paul Stassino as Dr Simmias. Himself facing execution for incompetence, Simmias defects and reveals the whereabouts of Dr Love to the British. This is another believable incident, lowkey and presented with thorough and quick exposition. There’s no extensive fights or chases here. Instead Love is tortured by Ronald Radd’s Stanilaus, forces the Peace Plane to land in Canada by using the ingenious transmitter and makes good an exit following a fatal gun battle which ends Vikki’s life and finishes off the bad guys.

    The closing scenes don’t quite match what came before. There’s a neat joke where Love states the new MI6 code book is the Kama Sutra, precisely because the book is banned in Russia, but otherwise this sequence is deadly serious, yet oddly tensionless, perhaps because there’s no real point to this exercise, as there wasn’t in the novel. Hence, the story drags at the moment it ought to thrill.  

    On the production side, Guest and Mankiewicz’s script proves functional. Leasor himself added some gloss. Val Guest’s direction sums up his career as it’s competent without ever being extravagant. He’s probably at his best in the opening sequence where Rosser is uncovered and kidnapped. There are real surprises here and a cloying atmosphere of Cold War anxieties and manners pervades the action. The location footage is all exteriors, but the interiors don’t disgrace anyone, although it is noticeable how large and uncluttered Ken Adam’s OO7 sets are – even the small ones – compared to those created here by John Howell. Adam gives his sets enormous scope and space and more than anything this gave Bond films an impression of size and grandeur. By contrast, Where the Spies Are and Jason Love can’t help looking like second-rate small fry. The music from Mario Nasimbene has a mid-sixties Mantovani lounge feel, which doesn’t sound as rough on the ear as it reads on paper, even if occasionally there’s some extravagance with the strings. Robert Brownjohn filmed the rather excellent title sequence. I do wish he’d done more Bond titles.              

    Where the Spies Are is a much better film than it’s given credit for. Chief among its assets is treating its subject with an element of seriousness. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it is a little silly. But there’s no outrageous plot, no enormous grandstanding set, no over the top henchmen with steel rimmed bowler hats, no secret operatives with white cats and fancy names. Okay, I’m being unfair to James Bond now, but by not slavishly following the unwritten rules the industry created for spy-spoofs following Goldfinger, Where the Spies Are succeeds to rise above the general malaise.

    If you want to view it, I finally tracked the movie down on this link. It took me ages to find, I’m not sure why, as it has been posted since 2018:

    https://ok.ru/video/985706859188

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    thanks @chrisno1 I've bookmarked that link. I skipped your review after the first couple paragraphs, cuz I want to watch this film first, then I'll go back to read your analysis.

    I've been looking for the Jason Love books, as @Barbel has mentioned them several times, but never been able to find the first volume.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Well, you could try the recent audio version starring George Lazenby (yes!) which is available on Amazon.

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