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The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
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Additional Blu-ray options | Edition | Discs | Price | New from | Used from |
Blu-ray
May 17, 2021 "Please retry" | — | 1 |
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| $17.65 | $22.75 |
Watch Instantly with | Rent | Buy |
Purchase options and add-ons
Genre | Action & Adventure |
Format | Blu-ray |
Contributor | Martin Ritt, Richard Burton, Oskar Werner, Claire Bloom |
Language | English |
Runtime | 1 hour and 52 minutes |
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Product Description
The acclaimed, best-selling novel by John le Carré, about a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, is transmuted by director Martin Ritt into a film every bit as precise and ruthless as the book. Richard Burton is superb
as Alec Leamas, whose relationship with the beautiful librarian Nan, played by Claire Bloom, puts his assignment in jeopardy. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a hard-edged and tragic thriller, suffused with the political and social consciousness that defined Ritt’s career.
Blu-ray Special Edition Features
- Restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interview with author John le Carré from 2008
- Selected-scene commentary featuring director of photography Oswald Morris
- The Secret Centre: John le Carré(2000), a BBC documentary on the author’s extraordinary life and work
- A 1967 interview with Richard Burton from the BBC series Acting in the 60’s,conducted by film critic Kenneth Tynan
- An audio conversation from 1985 between director Martin Ritt and film historian Patrick McGilligan
- Gallery of set designs
- Theatrical trailer
- PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Sragow
Product details
- Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
- MPAA rating : NR (Not Rated)
- Product Dimensions : 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 3.53 ounces
- Item model number : CRRN2312BR
- Director : Martin Ritt
- Media Format : Blu-ray
- Run time : 1 hour and 52 minutes
- Release date : September 10, 2013
- Actors : Richard Burton, Claire Bloom, Oskar Werner
- Subtitles: : English
- Studio : Criterion Collection
- ASIN : B00DHN8GQ2
- Country of Origin : USA
- Number of discs : 1
- Best Sellers Rank: #25,853 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #2,616 in Action & Adventure Blu-ray Discs
- Customer Reviews:
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John Le Carre is my favorite author of spy books, and often the films don't match the brilliant writing but in several films they really do catch the flavor of the times and the author's intent. "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" is a terrorizing novel that builds suspense masterfully. In a way, this film is less suspenseful but the drama of the shock finale is so well handled, and the actors so good that the film is a real masterpiece. It couldn't have been cast any better, with Richard Burton as the burnt-out British agent, Claire Bloom as the innocent idealist Communist party activist librarian and Oskar Werner as Fiedler.
I was surprised how this film stuck with me after viewing it; I know the book well but still the tight directing and excellent acting made this suspenseful story come alive.
The man was VASTLY underrated as an actor...well, maybe not underrated, but under-CONGRATULATED, since he never won an Oscar for any of his incredible, intense performances! He and Peter O'Toole were the crown PRINCES of intense! O'Toole, also, never won an Oscar, except for the Life Achievement Award he won just recently.
"Spy" was one of those landmark movies of the sixties that broke with type and showed the moviegoing public what life was REALLY like in a certain type of world. "Blow-Up" was another movie like this, showing how strange the world of fashion photographers could be. The psychiatric dramas "David & Lisa" and "Lilith" showed the world of adolescent and adult psychology in a true-to-life fashion, and "Spy" showed how dreary, deadly, grey and angst-ridden espionage could be, going against the glamourous, over-the-top image the Bond and Flint films and all their imitators had projected.
In the film, Burton plays a character named Alec Leames, an upper-middle-aged agent working for British Intelligence in the midst of the Cold War. The film opens with him, in fact, overseeing the defection of an East German at Checkpoint Charlie, perhaps THE major symbol of the Cold War. From there, it follows him in further dealings with East Germany trying to track down a double agent. He falls into a relationship with a pert but naive little communist played by Claire Bloom, gets approached by smarmy types trying to get him to defect to the OTHER side, with him masquerading AS a possible defector for BI, under the auspices of Cyril Cusack, an actor who has played some of the most condescending elitist types in movies. His characters are almost always in powerful middle management positions and always, ALWAYS have pedantic attitudes. His character, though he actually ISN'T the legendary George Smiley, was nonetheless the obvious prototype for Sir Alec Guinness' portrayal of Smiley in the BBC/PBS series based on Le Carre's novels. The Smiley character is actually a minor entity in this film, played by a rather nerdy actor.
Oskar Werner, who, along with Cusack, was very hot in "important" movies at the time, plays an East German investigator, prosecutor and negotiator. Cusack, in fact, starred with him in the Truffaut sci-fi classic "Fahrenheit 451" as well. Burton, Bloom, Cusack, Werner and Michael Holdern (Lillian Helman's long-lost twin brother)....This cast couldn't have gotten any classier if it had tried!
The B&W cinematography, the casting, Burton's performance, the relentlessly grey and doleful feel of the film, Martin Ritt's expert direction, (the man was a VERY reliable "good movie" director,) all add the dramatic touches that make this film the absolute BEST film about espionage in my experience! Claire Bloom's character, Nan, offsets and emphasizes the dreary feel of the movie with her own naiveté and altruism.
Why this film didn't sweep the '66 Academy Awards, I'll never know, but rest assured, it was the best dramatic offering in theaters that year. A complex, disturbing, important and incredible film that should, in retrospect, be honored for the work of art it was.
Highly recommended!
Le Carre has been responsible for other excellent ones, but none of his, nor anyone else's, has the pithy power of this.
Soon after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) plays the part of a dissolute, jaded, ripe-for-turning spy, and is dutifully recruited by East German Intelligence. He has been given information that will discredit Hans Dieter Mundt, the head of that organization. What Leamas doesn't know is that the English woman with whom he has been intimate has unwittingly been involved in events that will discredit his brief.
He is debriefed by Fiedler (played brilliantly by Oskar Werner), who is Mundt's second in command, and is Jewish. He is sophisticated, yet solicitous as to Leamas' comfort; he is meticulous, yet allows Leamas latitude, and they form a bond. Mundt, a sadistic former Nazi, breezes through the trial that could cost him his life. Without giving away the whole story, suffice it to say that his sangfroid is well founded.
In the climactic scene, as the first screen incarnation of George Smiley waits on the Western side of the Berlin wall, Leamas finally does come in from the cold (the phrase, in actual usage, meant, 'to leave the field work of covert operations'). As they drove towards their departure from East Berlin, Leamas' lover, aghast, had asked a question, followed by, " Fiedler was your friend! " Leamas replies with a great line in film history: " How big does a cause have to be until you kill your friends? What about your party? There's a few million souls down that road, too. "
The theme of the state vs. the individual is central to most good films in this genre, and Le Carre expresses it best in Leamas' recollection: driving, he had seen a station wagon full of kids bracketed by 'two great lorries (trucks)', with expected red consequence.
The book, which launched Le Carre's career, is quite short, and the film shares its forceful brevity. The Cold War may be decades past, but this emotional examination of commitment and deceit remains resonant.
While Ian Fleming, too, was in the British Secret Service, this story has no car chases, no exploding potentates, no salacious pandering, no travelogue. Unlike a Bond confection, this is a series of scenes in a series of dreary rooms and forbidding exteriors, piled one atop another, a Jenga Babel, until they, like one of Smiley's operations, are exquisitely unbearable.
The black and white medium seems especially appropriate for this mutual shading into greys. If thought-provoking dialog and unblinking, spartan photography are your cup of tea, see this wonderful masterpiece that never seems to get cold.
Top reviews from other countries
Guardei a recordação de um Richard Burton a construir uma personagem capaz de vencer as ficções conspirativas dos serviços de espionagem e contra-espionagem dum lado e doutro da cortina de ferro e o uso que fazem das vidas simples de seres humanos comuns. Escolhendo morrer para ficar do lado da mulher que o tinha apoiado e que acabara de ser morta pelas costas quando escalavam os dois o muro de Berlim, a personagem criada por Burton diante das câmaras constrói o sentido central de «vir do frio» no filme: não o ter sido afastado dos serviços secretos, mas o sair do vazio gelado de emoções e sentidos humanos para a realidade humana dos sentidos que dão sentido à vida humana. A morte foi o preço que a personagem de Burton teve de pagar para sair do frio.
A segunda recordação que guardei do filme de Ritt foi a magia do preto e branco. Três filmes me fizeram amar o preto e branco e perceber que o cinema, como o conhecemos no séc. XX e nos nossos dias, deve a sua grandeza ao preto e branco: Citizen Kane, de Welles; High Noon, de Zinnemann; e The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, de Ritt. A televisão que vemos na sala tem de ser a cores; o cinema que vemos numa sala às escuras deve a sua magia ao preto e branco.
From the very shot of this film, a close up of a piece of barbed wire, backed up by Sol Kaplan's haunting and melencholic piano solo, the film takes the viewer in and depicts a gray world of betrayel, murder, and second guessing. Martin Ritt's direction is phenomenal, the performances he gets from his cast is top notch and everyone from the lead, to the third starring cast is memorable. Oswold Morris' cold black and white cinematography is fantastic and gives the film a sense of urgency. Acting wise, Richard Burton plays the role of his career. He portrays Alec Lemas as a tragic figure, a man who has seen all the misery the job brings and has become a cynical and beaten man. Gone is the smarmy jet setter as created by Ian Fleming, and in turn we have the ultimate Le Carre creation, a man who uses public transport, shops in corner stores, gets drunk and is left ruined and bitter, all for his country.
On the opposite side we have Claire Bloom as Nan Perry, the young, idealistic left winger who falls for Alec and too gets involved in the horrible world that Alec inhabits. Oskar Werner as Fiedler, the snakey East German Intellegence interogator who wants to ruin his superior and go up the ladder is also phenomenal, but it is the brief appearence of Peter Van Eyck as Mundt who, like Burton, makes the role his own. Despite appearing briefly, his cold and calculating manner is a perfect reflection on the state of events.
If you can, I would seriously advise you importing Criterion's blu ray release. The picture is crisp and the mono soundtrack is clear and unobtrusive. However the extras on the Criterion release are the jewel in the crown, with newly commisioned interviews, and BBC documentries on Le Carre from the late 90s early 00's, the extras are a prize and are very informative for Le Carre fans.
It's a shame that Paramount have never upgraded this wonderful film to Blu-ray for the U.K. The U.S. Criterion Blu-Ray is sadly Region A locked, but for any major film buff, investing in a multi-region is a must. After fifty years, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold may well be the best spy thriller ever made. The bitterness and cynicism is more relavent today than ever before, and the plot of backstabbing to get to the top and leaving behing a host of casulties is also more relavant today. As Lemas tells the delusional, yet humane Perry, the best line in the film; "How big does a cause have to be before you kill your friends?" Though the Cold War is long over, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold has stood the test of time with its tone and plot. As the scorn of Le Carre's eye, James Bond says in Goldeneye "Goverments change, the lies stay the same"