Master Spy

No fast action here, as spying business is a very slow and tedious affair, as already Somerset Maugham made clear in his early short stories, as that activity mainly tries your patience until it breaks, and that's when the mistakes are committed. Stephen Murray makes a very credible character as the defector from Yugoslavia seeking asylum in Britain and getting employed in an advanced nuclear research centre, where he can be at large doing whatever research he wants and using the results for his own ends, but unfortunately his collaborator is the wrong kind of man, and when he prompts the execution of Murray's secretary, for having found out about their business, Murray declines, and things are messed up. It's a rather ordinary spying story of double crossing and double purposes and the main issue getting busted, and the whole enterprise reaches a rather hasty end, without the original purpose getting fulfilled. But no one dies, and that at least is something in this rotten business where the end always justifies the means and usually get shipwrecked on the way.

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.

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.

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.

The film starts promisingly enough, with what we can only assume is a Russian scientist, Boris Turganov, played by Stephen Murray successfully seeking political asylum and for next 20 minutes the storyline unfolds as the scientist is introduced to his new British scientist colleagues and working conditions. Yet once the 'Russian' scientist settles into his new role, interest starts to falter as very early on it's clear as daylight that two of the main characters are obviously are up to their neck in spying and espionage. Most of the scenes are in either Dennis Wheatley's drawing room is his rather grand house, where everyone is well mannered and polite, and in the laboratory, where again there is very little action. Considering this is a Cold War spy film, it's very short on suspense or dramatic twists and turns. The film needed a Herbert Lom to give the film an 'edge' and menace, and although Stephen Murray, who takes the lead role does a reasonable job as the Russian scientist, his performance is too bland and too low key! Indeed, my problem with the whole film is the lack lustre script, which never allows the characters to be more than just one dimensional. Also, the characters never convince me as serious scientists working in a top secret government laboratory. For instance, Peter Gilmore, playing Tom Masters a cynical young scientist, seems more interested in 'skirt chasing' and chatting up young women, and as such comes across as an unnecessary distraction to the story. John Carson, cast as the handsome and suave Richard Colman, is wasted, as he has little to do apart from befriend his love interest, Leila played by June Thorburn. Yet it is Leila, the young female top scientist, who is the least convincing, by her timid and dull demeanour as well as her 'secretarial' manner, even when the director has her wearing glasses in the laboratory, to make her look 'studious' and something of a boffin, it doesn't really work. However, there are compensations. Alan Wheatley is always a joy to watch, as is Ernest Clark, both British stalwart character actors of the 50's & 60's. In a sense the film is a disappointment, as it promised so much at the beginning but quickly loses its way half way through. Nevertheless, it's still worth watching.