O agente britânico Alec Leamas se recusa a voltar da Guerra Fria durante os anos 60 e opta por enfrentar outra missão, que pode ser sua última.O agente britânico Alec Leamas se recusa a voltar da Guerra Fria durante os anos 60 e opta por enfrentar outra missão, que pode ser sua última.O agente britânico Alec Leamas se recusa a voltar da Guerra Fria durante os anos 60 e opta por enfrentar outra missão, que pode ser sua última.
- Direção
- Roteiristas
- Artistas
- Indicado a 2 Oscars
- 10 vitórias e 5 indicações no total
- Hans-Dieter Mundt
- (as Peter Van Eyck)
- Direção
- Roteiristas
- Elenco e equipe completos
- Produção, bilheteria e muito mais no IMDbPro
Avaliações em destaque
The movie is from the John Le Carre novel and is a hard-nosed look at the world of international espionage and double agents, as different from the Bond movies as night from day.
Stripped of glamour and endless sunshine, Martin Ritt, the director, uses black and white, rain and wind to enhance the story. One could say the cinematography is a character in itself.
There is no distinction here between the good guys and the bad guys. Spies are of themselves irredeemably evil men in the game for their own nefarious purposes, divorced from all that is decent and humane.
Burton's eyes constantly reflect this as he manages to infiltrate the East Communist Bloc and plays the game instigated by his "Control" in London.
Claire Bloom portrays his innocent young girlfriend, naive and pliable. Oskar Werner and Peter Van Eyck play the East Germans fighting for control of Burton's memoirs and each other.
It is hard to be believe that Burton lost his Oscar to Lee Marvin (in Cat Ballou!!) when he so richly deserved it for his once in a lifetime performance in "The Spy--" Cyril Cusack has a wonderful supporting role as "Control" and just about steals his two scenes from Burton. He never disappoints.
I loved this film in the theatre when it was released and subsequent viewings never fail to enthrall me.
8 out of 10.
Richard Burton is Alec Laemmas, John Le Carre's reluctant spy, whose disillusionment is turned against him to save one last informant: hard to believe that Mr. Burton was then still in the throes of his public romance with Liz Taylor. Grim's the word here: from the opening Checkpoint Charlie Berlin scene to the Dutch shores to the East German countryside--the Cold War's done nobody any favors. Moreover, this harsh treatment of spies & their back-stabbing, double-dealing ways was made just after Ian Fleming's suave James Bond had become a pop movie icon (Bond's "M," Bernard Lee, as a grocer here ["T'get a proper credit, y'need a banker's reference."], gets the crap pummeled outta him by Burton).
Anyway, "Spy" is movie stripped of glamor: everyone gets usurped by people with power. Burton's Laemmas is sent to salvage the good guys' chief informant, a senior GDR official; Claire Bloom's Commie idealist Nancy is called to East Germany under the ruse of cultural exchange, to aid in the hoax. Oscar Werner is mesmerizing ("Were you present for ziss...Sanksgiving?") as the no. 2 man in the Abteilung, on the trail of no. 1, Peter van Eyck, until Laemmas shows up to thwart his plans.
If old cold warriors were only half as conniving as they appear here, whither did they go after the fall of the Soviet Union? Something to which nobody with nanogram of sense has paid much attention.
Burton is cast as Alex Leamas, a nerve-dead, aged secret operative operating out of West Berlin. After a routine assignment goes awry, Leamas is sent home and out of the service. He struggles to try to live a normal, average life as a librarian's assistant, but he can't make it work for him (something that is not helped by his chronic alcoholism). This fact is made forcefully clear when he winds up beating a local grocer and is sentenced to jail time. Slowly but surely, he allows himself to be pulled back into the Cold War he operated in, not suspecting or maybe not even caring that his superiors are setting him up for a fall.
One will never mistake Alex Leamas' grey, rainy world for the sunlight universe of James Bond. It offers what is probably the ugliest depiction of the Great Game on film: drunkards, ex-Nazis, Jews, and die-hard Communists swimming like sharks through a fish pond, all of them devouring any who get in their way. None have any more than lip-service loyalty to their fellow operatives, their countries, or maybe even their own ideologies. At it's center stands Burton, playing Leamas as a walking dead man, festering with hate, resentment, and cynicism at the system that eventually sends him into the gutter. His devastating parked car monologue alone is worth the price of renting this one from the local video store.
It's bitter cynic tone may have been the film's undoing; rarely have I seen a film so downbeat in it's depiction of humanity. Still, it is not one that deserves to be forgotten.
Você sabia?
- CuriosidadesAfter Richard Burton became a superstar, he insisted on casting his friends from his days at the Old Vic and West End (London's equivalent to New York City's Broadway). Friends of Burton's cast in this movie included Michael Hordern and Robert Hardy. Burton's former leading lady (on-stage and in two movies) Claire Bloom, however, was cast by Martin Ritt. This caused friction for several reasons: Burton had wanted his wife, Dame Elizabeth Taylor, in the role, and he and Bloom had been an item in the 1950s. John le Carré remembers that "off-screen Bloom preserved a dignified distance in her caravan".
- Erros de gravaçãoAt the beginning of the film they say that Leamas has been waiting for days for the arrival of Riemeck. This behavior doesn't make sense, as it gives away the arrival of a defector to the opposing side.
- Citações
Alec Leamas: It was a foul, foul operation, but it paid off.
Nan Perry: Who for?
Alec Leamas: What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? Yesterday I would have killed Mundt because I thought him evil and an enemy. But not today. Today he is evil and my friend. London needs him. They need him so that the great, moronic masses you admire so much can sleep soundly in their flea-bitten beds again. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me...
Nan Perry: You killed Fiedler!
Alec Leamas: How big does a cause have to be before you kill your friends? What about your Party? There's a few million bodies on that path!
- ConexõesFeatured in Great Performances: Richard Burton: In from the Cold (1988)
Principais escolhas
Detalhes
- Data de lançamento
- País de origem
- Central de atendimento oficial
- Idiomas
- Também conhecido como
- O Espião que Veio do Frio
- Locações de filme
- Smithfield Market, Dublin, County Dublin, Irlanda(Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin - opening scene: Leamas waits for the agent to come through the border from East Germany)
- Empresa de produção
- Consulte mais créditos da empresa na IMDbPro
Bilheteria
- Faturamento bruto mundial
- US$ 529
- Tempo de duração1 hora 52 minutos
- Cor
- Proporção
- 1.85 : 1