Les filles du code secret

"Sebastian" is a film from 1968 that is the ultimate swinging London '60s flick, starring Dirk Bogarde, Susannah York, Lili Palmer, and John Gielgud. Bogarde plays a tough, cold on the outside British mathematician who heads a code decryption department during the Cold War. He has many women in his employ, and one of them (Susannah York) falls for him and pursues him, and he reciprocates.

Fun music and atmosphere of the '60s permeates. York is lovely as a smart, pretty woman who knows what she wants, isn't afraid to try for it, and cracks the hardest code in the bunch - Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde is excellent as a man of deep feeling who likes to keep his work life separate from his private life and doesn't quite succeed.

Not much of a plot, but the acting is good - you can't really go wrong with Lili Palmer and John Gielgud in the supporting roles. Palmer plays a codebreaker of long-standing who is nevertheless under suspicion for some of her views, and Gielgud is one of the big bosses over Bogarde.

Enjoyable.

Sebastian is one of those movies you see once and remember for a long time. I saw it back in the seventies, and didn't get to enjoy it again until I caught it on TV in the nineties. Still, I remembered its groovy sixties-London atmosphere, its intellectually stimulating plot about codebreaking, Susannah York's breezy, mini-skirted, somewhat flighty Rebecca who is actually quite smart, Bogarde's coldly academic Sebastian with passion seething underneath, and Jerry Goldsmith's right-on soundtrack.

Like a lighter LeCarre story, you get Cold War tension, but with a post-war British self-deprecating viewpoint. They may not be the Empire they once were, but they do have a bit of expertise in cryptography that the Yanks would be willing to compensate them for. Donald Sutherland plays an NSA type at Fylingdale Moor who turns Sebastian on (literally) to the latest intercepts from a Russian satellite. He's immediately impressed when Sebastian hears the embedded signal that carries classified data piggy-back with the normal Sputnik beeps. Mixed in with this main West versus East plot is the late-sixties go-go scene, with Sebastian's former paramour a pop singer a little past her prime, with his right-hand girl a bit of a leftist sympathizer, and with his new girlfriend, Rebecca, a pre-hippy free spirit determined to pry him out of his Oxford Don shell. Susannah York's Rebecca is fun-loving but has a flame-hot temper that reacts explosively to Sebastian's unemotional pomposity. Her true depth is shone later when she quietly removes herself to care for her baby, without the assistance of its father, Sebastian, who has dropped out of her life. I feel it's the best role of York's uneven career.

What really takes the movie a step above, is Jerry Goldsmith's score. His instrumental "First Day at Work" catches just the right combination of urban excitement and spritly spirit that accompanies Rebecca and a bevy of beautiful and brainy girls as they make their way in to begin their work as cryptanalysts working in Sebastian's high-tech sweatshop. While the rest of the soundtrack is not up to his Blue Max or Wind and the Lion standards, this one tune alone puts Goldsmith's soundtrack above most movie music.

I would put this one in my list of top 100 movies for its cast, its atmosphere, its music, and its re-watchability. I hope it comes out on DVD soon.

I am sure that my summary above is confusing and I'll need to decode what I am talking about here. If you are looking for a quintessential 1970s film that is completely soaked in what the 70s looked like and sounded like, it's hard to find that better represents it than "Saturday Night Fever". And, when it comes to the 60s, I think "Sebastian" is THE quintessential film of that decade as well-- beginning with the weird opening credits and continuing throughout. Whatever you think of these sorts of films, they are all style, music, glitz, attitude, morals and pizazz--like films created less by scriptwriters and more by fashion designers and pop artists. This isn't at all a complaint--just an observation about style. In "Sebastian", you get all of what made the late 60s so goofy--the clothing, the colors, the sounds, the editing...everything. I think the film looks like a joint project by Peter Max and Twiggy!

Sebastian (Dirk Bogarde) is a mathematical genius. He spends the beginning of the film recruiting more ladies to join his giant government think tank--ladies who can think outside the box and have quick minds. Throughout this process and once they begin their jobs, it soon becomes obvious that Sebastian just ain't normal--he lacks many social skills and is a very independent thinker. This ends up causing problems with the government, as he resists their attempts to control his department and rid it of 'undesirables'. Oddly, however, a new woman to the department, Rebecca (Susanna York) is intrigued by Sebastian and decides very quickly she wants to seduce him--even though his personality is seriously quirky and flawed to say the lest (he shows some signs of Asperger's). The film is about this affair as well as Sebastian's frustrations dealing with folks outside his department who are meddlers...and along the way is another plot, more sinister, involving an old mistress.

So is all this any good? Well, I'd say that the setup for the story is quite good and very intriguing. However, over time the film seemed to lose momentum. Part of it was because occasionally the film showed a bit of a misogyny--such as when Sebastian slapped his new girlfriend across the face. Overall, it's not a bad film but promised to be so much more at the start.

Oh, where did the 1960s ever go? What happened? (Sob.) Before it became distressingly violent the 1960s were informed by a light-hearted revolutionary spirit. The Beatles were breaking records, which was nice, and the skirts were tiny, which was also nice. Recreational highs were a pastime and the scent of flowers, hemp, or at least incense, was in the air, a pastel age. There was a Cold War going on too. That's not so nice. However even such a serious business was subject to frolicsome presentations, and this is a good example. The credits are irritating though. I wish "The Pink Panther" with its adorable credit sequences hadn't appeared four years earlier because everybody had to have a crack at it after that.

This movie is cute without being hilarious. Everyone is good natured, even the authorities who are not good natured. Among its virtues are the lanky, leggy Susannah York, all soft, pink, blond, and utterly beautiful. She looks dusted in talcum powder. Then there is the officious Dirk Bogarde, in his dark suit and umbrella, who hires her as a code breaker for some intelligence apparat in England. York is a whiz at it too, although her talent doesn't impress Bogarde that much. York sees Bogarde as a challenge and sets out to liberate him. It couldn't have been too hard. He had nowhere to go but up, and this is the London of "Blow Up," tastefully psychedelic.

The bossy Bogarde keeps a loose woman, Janet Munro, on the side but York soon seduces him and finds he is reluctantly but undeniably distracted from his blue notebook. It's a bad idea for Bogarde to be mixed up with Susannah York. I should have been mixed up with Susannah York instead of him. Somewhere in the background of all this is Sir John Gielgud, good as ever, simultaneously charming and disdainful, wearing a carefully pressed suit and what appears to be a Crescent tie. He's a delight but I believe his school tie should be Westminster, not Crescent.

Anyway it turns more serious as the Russians enter the picture, and the Americans too. Bogarde is assigned a big decoding job involving a Russian satellite. An incredibly young Donald Sutherland cheerfully plays a recording of the first Russian satellite ever. He claims it's sending Morse code but it's not. I was a radioman in the Coast Guard at the time and had to copy the signals. The thing just went beep beep beep.

Spies manage to lace Bogarde's champagne at one point with acid but it all ends happily. Bogarde also appeared in "Modesty Blaise" somewhere around this time. It made no more sense than "Sebastian" but was probably more fun. It had Bogarde stretched out on the sand, dying of thirst, and moaning, "Champagne . . . champagne." "Sebastian" isn't that absurd.

At first encounter this would seem as a rather flimsy concoction of muddled espionage pastiche with Dirk Bogarde as a decoding expert surrounded by a league of only very pretty girls - and there are lots of them. One of them is more obtrusive than the others, Susannah York, who importunes on his private life to become his mistress - with complications. The film really becomes interesting, however, when he loses his job, and there the action starts with increasing thickening of the plot, as the espionage business moves into higher gear.

Everything is brilliant in this film, however limited it is to its times of the late 60s which makes it very outdated today, but the acting couldn't be better, by Dirk of course, always intelligent and interesting, Susannah York at her best, John Gielgud and Nigel Davenport in smaller but not less important parts, Lilli Palmer as the most experienced of them all and something of an odd key player, and even Donald Sutherland in one vital scene. Jerry Goldsmith is the name of the music vying with Johann Sebastian Bach as Dirk's only actual relief from his troubles, while it all ends with an odd twist, which neither Dirk, Susannah York nor the audience would have expected. It's not altogether a comedy, no thriller, although better than any later James Bond, no real spy thriller, but something of it all in brilliant combination.