Les chandelles noires

Strongly agree with your own comments, this early Le Carre novel is one of my favourites but this version lacks one thing to make it complete. Denholm Elliott is very good as Smiley but Alec Guinness, for any who saw him in the role in "Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smileys People" will understand that he IS George Smiley. The rest of the cast are superb and in answer to that question 'Why can't Americans make Movies like this?" the Answer is that you do! Look for them in odd places, "Chiefs", "Centennial" and so on. The Movie follows the book and only really misses on that strange and quintessentially English feeling of claustrophobia that exists in Public School Towns. The Constant battle between school and town. Both deeming the other to be the outsiders. Pickup is wonderful as D'Arcy. I would love to have seen Ian Cuthbertson as Fielding but well you cant have everything can you? I strongly urge all to view this at least twice, the first time to enjoy and the second time to pick up on all the Le Carre touches. I also urge you to find an old English movie of his "A Call For The Dead" All in all a great production and as stated faithful to the original.

I saw this recently and remembered how good English TV drama can be. Denholm Elliot's Smiley is so good that I didn't even feel urged to compare it with Alec Guinness'. They both took the character on so well that in each case it was a very complete performance. They both captured the deceptively calm and inoffensive persona - and the sharp biting anger that seems to come from nowhere. The story is good, the mood and supporting cast are all tops. Some of the answers to the mystery can be picked up early on but who cares? The entire production is so well crafted that it's a pleasure just watching it all roll out scene by scene.

A surprise to John Le Carré's readers and to viewers who already know about his works adapted into films, "A Murder of Quality" is a less challengeable enterprise for the great agent George Smiley, this time investigating a mysterious murder close to a respected school in England's countryside. Smiley and his ability to find clues here are more approachable to someone like Hercule Poirot than to someone who had difficult missions when of his time in the Circus solving global problems during the Cold War.

This TV adaptation goes according the original work, a small film based on a small book with effective and similar result. Both are good but they suffer from the greatness of seeing Smiley doing more important jobs going around the world working for the British intelligence. Plot is well elaborated but sometimes we lose interest in it, its lack of having a good pace to keep the story going. Plus, it looks like something already shown before time and time again, but it might work better for those who never watched careful and brilliant investigative flicks before. This isn't sinking into obscurity because people are rediscovering it due to very young Christian Bale's minor yet important role in it, people get curious to see some of his early projects.

Casting's good work is what makes of "A Murder of Quality" a very decent film. Playing the great George Smiley is Denholm Elliott, who brings a jolly quality to the role of the eternally enigmatic, contrived and serious character whose delivery of lines goes without affection, enthusiasm or surprise. Not the best portrayal of Smiley (Gary Oldman nailed it in every possible aspect in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy") but it's a good one anyway, very amusing and playful. And there's place for a remarkable performance of Glenda Jackson, playing George's best friend and helper with the case, and the efficient presences of David Threlfall and Joss Ackland.

A good dramatic suspense but never effervescent as Carré's stories tend to be. 7/10

John LeCarré has been lucky in the adaptations of some of his books on to film. 'A Murder of Quality', though quite different from 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' and 'Smiley's People', not to forget 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold', is a perfectly crafted murder mystery.

Denholm Elliot's George Smiley does not try to imitate the famous portrayals by Alec Guinness but creates a similarly fascinating character out of LeCarré's most famous creation. Glenda Jackson plays his spinsterish "pal", Ailsa Brimley, a former colleague of Smiley's from The Circus during the war years. She is akin to Connie Sachs, memorably played by the great Beryl Reid in other LeCarré adaptions. Both Ailsa and Connie were in love with George and enraged at his reprobate wife, Ann. This and other LeCarré themes are used in 'A Murder of Quality' to their usual intriguing effects; the inclusion of homosexuality, misogynistic tendencies in some of the male characters and the hint of Smiley's darker, perhaps murderous past.

It is good to see Joss Ackland and Thorley Walters, old hands from earlier LeCarré adaptations. There isn't a weak link in the cast. Christian Bale makes a sexually tantalizing school boy, complete with his "criminal mind" and vulnerable consciousness. Diane Fletcher, the Lady Macbeth-like Mrs Urquehard from 'House of Cards' appears here as the tough dramatic arts mistress, the archetype gorgon, hearty and heartless.

Billie Whitelaw is a poignant mad-woman, Ronald Pickup a wonderfully spineless worm who lives with his "manly" sister, Fiona Walker. Matthew Scurfield is a fascinating police chief, a working grunt with many-faceted depths to his personality.

The cinematography is on the dark and gloomy side, as befits the story and setting. The music is superb, another wonderfully evocative score by the late great Stanley Myers.

This is now available on DVD from Acorn Media and I urge all LeCarré addicts to get it.

Great television like this is extremely rare, and getting scarcer all the time.

This movie is a fine work of art. Changes to the original story are very scarce and the acting is quite flawless. So is the period feel as well as camera and directing. Denholm Elliot was magnificent as Smiley. "So sad - so few of us left" (Shane Hecht in the novel, for those who have not read it.)