Master Spy

Despite the title and the credit sequence depicting a chessboard Professor Turgenev is just a pawn in a much bigger game. Unlike the glamorous foreign locations paraded behind 007 this film is set in a thoroughly everyday black & white Britain.

Stephen Murray in a rare big screen lead plays Cambridge-educated professor of physics Boris Turganev, a leading expert on the acceleration of neutron rays but just an amateur in the world of espionage.

His patronising disdain for women, demonstrated by his outspoken discomfort at being given June Thorburn as an assistant is one of several aspects of the film that now looks very dated; but the other men are just as bad and the casting of Ellen Pollock as a senior member of the team serves as compensation while the ending is pretty cool.

Stephen Murray is a national of a foreign government who has been in Britain for decades, becoming a respected nuclear physicist. One day he's found in the hands of that foreign government, being transported back against his wishes. He asks for asylum and it's granted. He is sent to a research facility, where he continues his work for peaceful exploitation of science with the aid of brilliant assistant June Thornburn. He keeps busy; besides his research, he's stealing scientific work for his government.

It's a dull little spy drama, going through all the less dramatic ways in which espionage is carried out; technically interesting, but the occasionally blaring score by Ken Thorne lets you know that something VERY DRAMATIC has just occurred. Still, it's an interesting role for Murray, his last on the big screen, as it is for Miss Thornburn. She might have made more movies, but she died in a plane crash in 1967.

I saw this film yesterday morning. I like British low budget, (usually) black and white films from the 1950s and 1960s so I made the effort to ensure that I was available to watch it. Not only was I not disappointed; it turned out to be one of the best of its type.

The plot was very full, with plenty of twists and turns. I will not say what these are, but suffice it to say that they make for a very satisfying concept when one reflects on the film.

The conceptual basis for the story is interesting. It shows how two elements of life in the 1960s had come to the fore. One is the concept of spying and the other is the prominence of science and scientific research. "The white heat of the technological revolution", in Harold Wilson's phrase from that year's General Election campaign. One may conclude that the film was up to date in that sense. (The film "Ring Of Spies", made in the previous year, dealt with these themes from a different aspect.)

A few points arise from the milieu and setting. One is that, in contrast to what was to become a common suggestion/complaint a few years later, there is no sense that it is unusual to have women in senior positions in the research team; indeed, quite the contrary. The other is that several of the characters are shown smoking, regularly. Should there ever be a film suggested that would deal with this subject and this period, the makers will need to bite this particular bullet in the interests of accuracy.

An incidental fact, but one which identifies the film as very much of its period, is the style of spectacles worn by both June Thorburn and the senior civil servant's secretary. This "fashion" style, with prominent rims, belongs almost exclusively to the early and mid-1960s.

Turning to the cast, there is a good collection of British "second rank" character actors. I particularly noted Peter Gilmore's portrayal and of course Stephen Murray, who was completely unrecognisable from the (voice of the) Commander in the long-running radio series "The Navy Lark".

There is also the, to my mind, most attractive player in the film, the charming (and ultimately tragic) figure of June Thorburn. I am always pleased to see her name in the cast list of films made during the decade which began in the first half of the 1950s. That this film was in fact her final one, despite her death not occurring for another three years, shows that her time as a leading actress was over. This, I am sure, will have to been due to a combination of personal reasons and the change in the British film industry, which saw the decline and largely the end of the lower budget films from the mid-1960s onwards.

Had things continued, I am sure that she would still have been cast, as she always makes her mark, playing leading roles in films that do not have an obvious appeal to female members of the audience and making her mark in them. "Fury At Smuggler's Bay" (1961) and her penultimate film, 1963's "The Scarlet Blade", are the films which I have most in mind here.

All told, then, this is a film which has much to recommend it. If you like this type of film, it will be worth making the effort to see it, should it be shown again.

I have just seen this film, and I thought it was rather sad that it got such a low vote score (3.9 as a "weighted average", at the time of writing) and a negative review as the only review it has on IMDb.

The film is obviously low budget and no classic. Having said that it has many plus points. It is well plotted and clever, with twists and turns (especially towards the end) and it sustains the interest well. It makes all the characters interesting, even the supporting ones, such as Peter Gilmore's flippant scientist. It makes a wise move in having June Thorburn - much underused by the British cinema - as its leading lady. There is also a surprisingly good supporting cast considering it is so low budget. And so on...

At an hour and ten minutes, the film is long enough to tell a proper story well, and short enough not to outstay its welcome. It provided me with an enjoyable time viewing it.

As noted by the other reviewers, Master Spy is no classic, but it is a must-see for fans of British B movies of the era. The story is fairly routine, but is much enlivened by the cast - Alan Wheatley (excellent as always), John Carson (with his James Mason-sound-alike voice!), Peter Gimore playing his role to perfection, and most interestingly the tragic June Thorburn cast against type as a scientist who becomes dangerously involved in the espionage plot. With her shorter, blonder hair, Miss Thorburn here is a dead ringer for Angela Douglas, a likeness I had never noticed before, and she is totally credible and brings much to what could have been a nothing part. Very sadly she died in a plane crash a couple of years after completing this, her final film.