Maldonne pour un espion

I loved Laurence Harvey in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. This is also a good performance. The spy stuff and his relationship with the character played by Tom Courtenay are interesting. Also interesting is the young Peter Cook in a "straight" role ( well sort of). Harvey brought such an air of sadness and despair to this kind of role ( much like his doomed brainwashed pawn in MC). I recall a scene where he is asked about his mother's death ( I believe) and he cannot remember how he felt. The life and emotion were drained out of him to create the perfect double agent. This kind of film was popular in the 60's as an antidote to James Bond and his clones. Others include THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and THE DEADLY AFFAIR. The great Anthony Mann started this film and was replaced by Harvey when Mann died.

There were All Kinds of Secret Agent Movies in the 1960's Spinning Off the Success of the James Bond Series.

Spoofs, Satires and Super-Serious Stuff.

But this is one Odd Duck Among the Proliferation. It Starts with a Marionette Title Sequence that is a Color Saturation Stunner.

There is a Psychedelia to it that will Continue through the Running Time.

The Movie Employs Editing and Camera Tricks that were somewhat "New" at the Time and Adds to the Overall Surreal, Detached from Reality Tone.

It's Complicated and the Dry Delivery is Contrasted by some Visual Vibes that are Bizarre and make the Viewing Disjointed and Decidedly Different.

Legendary Director Anthony Mann Died Suddenly During Filming.

He and Star Laurence Harvey were in Close Consultation Regularly.

So Harvey Finished the Movie in the Director's Chair and Probably Continued with Mann's Vision. Accounts Differ.

It is one of the Most Awkward Takes on the Cold War Zeitgeist with an Ambiance of Confusion and Disarray.

Mia Farrow's Love-Interest Character is Inserted with Incomprehensible Regularity. Just One More of the Off-Beat Ingredients that make this an Experience Like No Other of its Ilk.

Be Advised it's a "Long Strange Trip".

Worth a Watch for the Quirk of it All.

It was somewhat of a feature of the late 1960s to make bleak and world weary spy movies. This film is in this mould. I saw the film upon it's release and quite enjoyed it, albeit it is slow and a little dull. Still, I think that it is an interesting piece of film making and enjoyed the performances of Laurence Harvey and Tom Courtenay who play British agents who do not like each other. (Harvey is in fact a double agent). There are some good locations shots of 1960's London (mainly bleak) and Berlin (not so bleak). Harvey trudges around both capitals after been given an assignment to kill a Russian Spy - who is in fact himself. Mia Farrow is a trendy young thing (tho' a bit on the thin side)and adds love interest. However, as she keeps turning up wherever Harvey goes, is she as innocent as she appears? A young Peter Cook also stars as a rather irritating junior British agent. John Bird and Lionel Stander add a little humour into an otherwise humourless film. Definitely worth a look.

In London, Alexander Eberlin (Laurence Harvey) is a double agent for both the British and the Soviet intelligence. The British orders him to hunt down Russian spy Krasnevin. He is partnered with British agent Gatiss (Tom Courtenay). He's having a fling with civilian photographer Caroline (Mia Farrow).

This needs to be a paranoid espionage thriller. It's not thrilling. Laurence Harvey is playing the character too coldly. He needs to be scared or something or else the audience won't care. Nobody is rooting for him. I barely know what Caroline sees in him. The story is too stiff and so is the lead.

The 1960s, for want of a better word, "vomited" knock-off spy thrillers in the wake of the success of the James Bond films with Sean Connery. Such titles included: Daniel Mann's Our Man Flint (1965); Ralph Thomas's Deadlier Than The Male (1967); and David Miller's Hammerhead (1968), to name but a few. However, this little number, A Dandy In Aspic (1968), based on the novel by Derek Marlowe, has passed through time relatively unnoticed, despite its direction by Anthony Mann, a filmmaker renowned for his work on Westerns and Film Noir thrillers. Moreover, this film boasts quite considerable acting talent of the day. The haunting Laurence Harvey plays the protagonist secret agent, Eberlin, who is given a mission to assassinate a KGB agent, and who is repeatedly haunted by past and present moral crises, very much in the tradition of the characters of John Le Carré and Ian Fleming. The love interest of the film is Caroline (in my opinion, the fairly talentless) Mia Farrow, playing the stereotypical role of a "swinging sixties" photographer, who, rather irritatingly, gets herself caught up in the spy game.

British acting stalwart, Tom Courtenay, plays the very understated character of Gatiss, a rival British spy who distrusts Eberlin. Look out for appearances by Richard O' Sullivan, of '70s televisual fame in the comedy series, Man About The House. The audience is also treated to a few guest appearances by British satirist, Peter Cook, for once unaccompanied by his partner-in-crime, Dudley Moore. Cook plays a comical womanising spy, Prentiss, who delivers such sexist lines they would make a millennial audience wince. Discussing with Eberlin the fact that his latest sexual conquest is "Eine kleine raver", in her company, is one of them. Still, the film is, naturally, indicative of its time.

The action sequences in the film are gritty and the film has a suitably brooding atmosphere which is, ironically, sometimes offset by the rather vibrant costumes the characters wear, supplied by veteran stylist, Pierre Cardin. Furthermore, the cinematography by Christopher Challis is tactful and it is accompanied by the appropriately minimalist score by veteran Jazz musician, Quincy Jones, whose scoring work for Sidney Lumet's adaptation of the Le Carré spy thriller, The Deadly Affair (1968), I equally enjoyed. After the film's recent premiere on Blu-Ray by Powerhouse Films, I thought it was timely to unearth this nearly fifty-year-old curio. If anything, watch it for Harvey's performance alone. That is, if you can simultaneously support Farrow's frequently sickly and mopey character.