Mister 8

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton

This post is late, with my apologies, because I spent the evening watching a movie about bespectacled Harry P., whose rebellious attitude helps him navigate past suspicious authority figures to thwart evil conspiracies.  I have to say that I’m disappointed that I paid so much extra for a tiny IMAX screen, and 3D for only the first ten minutes of the movie. Also, that I watched two hours of teenagers freaking out about puppy love and not the evil wizard who intends to kill them all.

In case you, like myself, were wondering, here’s the Deightonless answer from JK Rowling’s Scholastic website:

Q: From where did you get the name for Harry Potter?

J.K. Rowling responds: ‘Harry’ has always been my favourite boy’s name, so if my daughter had been a son, he would have been Harry Rowling. Then I would have had to choose a different name for “Harry” in the books, because it would have been too cruel to name him after my own son. “Potter” was the surname of a family who used to live near me when I was seven years old and I always liked the name, so I borrowed it.

I feel as though we  haven’t addressed everything I wanted in our discussion of Len Deighton’s The IPCRESS File, but I also don’t want the discussion to grow stagnate, so today, I’ll be addressing a few, nugget-style wrap-up thoughts about the novel. Feel free to continue talking about the book in the comments section of this post!

The Framing Device

If you’ve read the prologue and first chapter, you’ll note that The IPCRESS File has a framing device wherein the narrator visits the Minister of Defence to explain the whole affair. The framing story was nothing new, but I’m always interested in the choices the author makes in presenting the story. Perhaps it’s all the times, as an English major, I had to answer, “In Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, why the customs house?”

Deighton’s decision in IPCRESS is interesting because the framing device itself has a frame. We are not eavesdropping on the narrator telling the minister the story of Jay, the brainwashing, Dalby, etc., but rather, he is telling us about telling the minister about the affair (complete with footnotes and an appendix — were these for us or the minister?). At this point, we’re sort of thrice removed from the actualities of the narrator’s experience, and so have to consider the validity of the details. One always wonders with first person narrators how faithful the related narrative was to the “truth” (if one can consider a “truth” having taken place in a fictitious world). Our narrator, like Chandler’s Marlowe before, seems quite witty and capable in the crunch, but it’s sometime hard to judge whether this is a construct on the part of the fictional storyteller. In IPCRESS, we’re bound to believe the narrator, again as with Marlowe, because he equally details the instances in which he was proven fallible.

Another interesting question to ask might be who we, as the reader, represent? The narrative is presented casually, conversationally, and with no attempt to keep certain details secret. In this framing device choice, Deighton has seemingly made us part of the intel community. And is this not part of the thrill of reading espionage fiction, to be included in the behind-the-scenes action of the “great game”?

The Americans

As an American myself, I was interested to read Deighton’s take on the American characters in The IPCRESS File. I was fascinated to see the “special relationship” playing out through the history (he spent time training with the CIA) and present (he’s warned by “Barney” Barnes of the impending double cross) of the narrator character, and the way in which race is presented. As I noted in my post on class issues the other day, we’re much more occupied in the US with issues of multiculturalism and civil rights for people of different races and genders (and while we’ve had some triumphant successes, such as our first black president, we’re still not perfect, as can be seen in the recent Henry Louis Gates Jr. affair).

The narrator notes that Skip Henderson was a rebel of his own for employing Barnes, in a time when the pressure would be on him to hire a white man intead:

I wished Jean would drop it. She just didn’t know a thing about Skip Henderson. Skippie Henderson who went to Korea and let himself be captured just so he could find out about collaborating in the prison camps; who came back to Washington with three bayonet wounds, a lungful of T.B. and a dossier that put a lot of ex-prisoner brass into the hot seat. In a courtmartial hot-seat. Skip stayed a captain for a long time after that. Prisoners’ friends had friends. But frightened? Skip? who had had the only Negro officer in C.I.A. as his assistant – Barney Barnes, and kept him against every sort of opposition that could be mustered. She just didn’t know what Skip was like. Smooth smiling Skip. Twenty years and they’d finally made him a major, and detailed a policeman to listen to his nightmares.

Later, there’s some interesting dialogue with epithets bounced back and forth between the narrator and Barnes. Were one not holding a gun on the other, I’d call it playful:

‘I’d just better be right about you, pale-face,’ he said.

‘You’d just better had, Sambo. Now ease down the drama and tell me what’s on your mind.’

Barney’s assistance only serves to get him murdered, which I think is a shame — he would’ve made a fine recurring character in the later novels.

The other Americans we briefly encounter are presented as horny devils that are easily tricked. Some days, I’d take offense at that, some days I’d feel that Deighton has us pegged (I feel the same way about CIA man Jeff Ross on The Sandbaggers).

As a nation, we do, it should be said, enjoy wearing flowered Hawaiian shirts whenever we get the opportunity.

Brainwashing

I’m going to hopefully make a post in the future about brainwashing and espionage fiction, but I want to direct you to a book featured by Jason Whiton @ Spy Vibe on the subject, Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control: A Study of Novels and Films Since World War II by David Seed. Here’s an excerpt from what the book has to say on the subject:

When the narrator is captured and taken to be interrogated at length by the plotters, his ordeal is presented as a displaced rerun of Hungarian brainwashing conducted by an Eastern-looking official he nicknames “Kubla Khan.” The process is a composite deriving from Orwell and descriptions like Vogeler’s and Gallico’s, where beating, drugs and meaningless questions reduce the narrator — potentially — to the point where he will be ready to stand trial. The most surreal moment in the novel comes when the narrator makes his escape, only to find himself in a north London bean-patch. The “detention camp” proves to be a house in Wood Green.

With the exception of his brief imprisonment, the narrator’s account totally understates the impact of brainwashing. The “IPCRESS” of the title is an abbreviation for “Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex with Stress,” designating a process being carried out by an organization directed by the evil genius of the novel, Mr. Jay. Mr. Jay has devised a way to plan brainwashed figures in positions of authority and, through an experimental “synthesized environment” in Switzerland, to supply continental factories with docile workers. It is he who states a bold rationale for conditioning by appealing to social efficiency: “One of these days, brain-washing will be the acknowledged method of dealing with anti-social elements. Criminals can be brainwashed. I’ve proved it. Nearly 300 people I’ve processed. It’s the greatest step forward of the century.” Jay describes brainwashing in contradictory terms both as a means of bringing the antisocial within norms and as a means of conquest (“another terrible weapon” even worse than nuclear bombs). Jay’s practices are described as being congenial to Communism although his organization is notionally independent and the defeat of the latter becomes a purging of the British establishment and therefore its consolidation. Because Deighton’s chosen method of narration only allows him to give cryptic glimpses of Jay’s activities, the reader has to wait for the narrator to explain brainwashing in the concluding chapters.

It’s interesting to note that, according to Seed, the modern concept of brainwashing didn’t occur until the Korean War, and so the concept was fairly fresh when presented in Deighton’s novel. There are a number of parallels between the narrator / Harry Palmer and Patrick McGoohan’s Number Six, as I hope to discuss in a later post, and we see them go through similar processes of imprisonment and false trials.

Jay

Like Seed, I’m also a little disappointed that we don’t learn more of Jay, who, at the close of the book is given his own section of British intel to oversee. We see from his file that he’s a career opportunist, but we learn nothing of how he came to develop the techniques of brainwashing seen in the novel, nor really what he’ll be up to with his new department. I want to highlight the close of the novel, minus the epilogue and the appendix, wherein our narrator finds himself dealing with a new strange bedfellow. I love the parallel here between Jay’s asking him to dinner, and his being held against his will in Jay’s home in chapters previous. I also love that, in the end, there wasn’t a shootout, but merely Jay turning himself in (probably knowing that the technical information he had would put him in a good bargaining position):

That’s about all of the IPCRESS story. There has been a lot of work go through Charlotte Street since; some interesting, but mostly boring. Painter has a whole medical research lab working with him, but so far they have found no way of ‘de-brain-washing’ people, and many of the original network are still under the threat of the Treason Act, while some still forward reports under the impression that they are going via Jay to some foreign power. Of course I don’t let Jay handle them, just in case he gets ideas. I see Jay at the monthly conference with Ross, when we prepare the Army Intelligence Memoranda Sheet. He seems happy enough, and he’s certainly efficient. I remember another thing about Jays – they store food for winter. ‘Moving in from opposite ends to the same conclusion,’ Dalby said once, and every time I am with Jay I think about it. But I doubt if this was what Dalby meant.

Anytime I want Jay I know I can find him at the ‘Mirabelle’, and last Saturday morning I bumped into him at Leds. He wants Jean and me to go to dinner with him. He said he would cook it himself. I’d like to go but I don’t think I will. It’s not wise to make too many close friends in this business.

What more would you like to discuss on the novel The IPCRESS File? Please feel free to chime in in the comments section below!

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

Clicking posters will take you to the site where I originally found them, and you’ll find they’re often available for purchase. For the complete collection of Harry Palmer film posters, check out the Harry Palmer Movie Site!

BONUS: Dinner, Harry Palmer style!

So, I finally had time to sit down tonight to watch The IPCRESS File again, and made good on my plans to have a Harry Palmer / Len Deighton inspired dinner with my wife as well. I wound up making omelets following Len’s example in The Truth About Len Deighton, with ingredients from Palmer’s movie recipe — mushrooms, green peppers, onions and cheese. And yes, I crack my eggs one handed! In addition, we had green peas (or, as I believe some of you call them, English peas or petit pois) with onions sauteed in butter. I had a slice of smoked salmon. My vegetarian wife enjoyed “facon” on her omelet.

For dessert, we didn’t turn to Deighton, but to Caine, who provided a recipe for bread n’ butter pudding in a 1989 interview with the New York Times. I adjusted the recipe a little, and got the wrong kind of raisins accidentally, but it still turned out to be quite delicious. Here’s a picture of the pudding before the finishing touches were put on (looks like someone snuck a bite!):

MICHAEL CAINE’S BREAD-AND-BUTTER PUDDING

• 9 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 3/4 cup dark rum
• 4 cups milk
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 30 slices good-quality white bread
• 6 ripe bananas, peeled and cut in 1/4-inch slices
• 1/2 pint whipping cream.

1.Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 14-cup glass baking dish with one tablespoon of butter.

2.Soak the raisins in one-half cup of the rum.

3.Combine the milk, eggs, remaining rum and one-quarter cup of the sugar. Set aside.

4. Butter one side of each slice of bread. Dip each slice in the custard and arrange in the baking dish. Alternate layers of bread with layers of bananas sprinkled with raisins and one tablespoon of sugar. There should be five layers of bread, four of bananas.

5.Pour any of the remaining custard over all and bake for one hour. Place under the broiler for about five minutes, or until brown. Whip the cream with the remaining sugar and serve with the warm pudding.

Yield: Eight to 10 servings.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

If you’re new to reading Mister 8, you might not be aware of the super secret organization that this website is a member of — COBRAS, or the Coalition of Bloggers wRiting About Spies — and our roster is comprised of some of the best espionage fiction experts and authors in the blogosphere.

I thought it might be interesting as we approach each movie to also look at the reviews of my fellow COBRAS agents. Surprisingly, I think more have covered the later Palmer films than the originator, The IPCRESS File. Here’s a sample of what David Foster @ Permission to Kill had to say (click through for a full review):

Imagine James Bond, heading up a team of ninjas, who are standing on the lip of a hollowed out volcano which houses the lair of an evil mastermind. But instead of storming the complex, Bond and the ninjas have to wait for their L101 form to be processed, and they have to receive TX82 clearance from headquarters. Obviously the worlds that James Bond and Harry Palmer inhabit are very different. Bond’s is one of action and instinct, whereas Palmer’s is one of rules, bureaucracy and paperwork. Despite this less glamourous world, The IPCRESS File is an excellent film, and Harry Palmer is an intriguing hero.

David also has an interesting observation about promotion / packaging of the film — it looks sort of drab on the shelf next to the Bond flicks, Matt Helm, Derek Flint, etc. And yet, isn’t that the point?

Jason Whiton @ Spy Vibe also discussed IPCRESS. Here’s a sample of his review:

The combination of stylish cinematography by Otto Heller (Peeping Tom, Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb), John Barry’s score, and the quasi-sci fi nature of the film’s use of electronic sounds and lighting as Brainwashing technology all combine to give The IPCRESS File a wonderful Spy Vibe Style.

Jason’s discussion of IPCRESS here is short, but he and guest writers explored it more in-depth later in a series on set design. We’ll be coming back to those posts in a later discussion of Ken Adams.

Wesley Britton touches on The IPCRESS File in his listing of Indispensables: The 30 Best Spy Films of All Time. Bookmark that link, because it’s something we’ll be coming back to later as well.

…IPCRESS remains the best of the trilogy as it established Harry Palmer as the antithesis to Bond, an irreverent, ironic, working-class agent who is coerced into government service because of his criminal skills. He’d prefer cooking to spying, doesn’t want to spy on weekends, and would prefer not to carry a gun. Director Sidney Furie used experimental techniques to illustrate the eavesdropping nature of espionage including camera angles from under cars and through lampshades. In addition, the scene in which Palmer thinks he’s being brain-washed in Albania while actually still being in London set the stage for the formula for mission: Impossible.

Please check out these reviews, and when you’re done, explore the rest of the sites on which they’re hosted. My fellow COBRAS agents have created a cornucopia of spy-fic information.

Do any of you Mister 8 readers have reviews of The IPCRESS File you’d like me to excerpt / link to? Let me know in the comments!

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

In the banner above…you know, the one that’s been on top of every HPF post so far…you may have noticed what is perhaps the coolest photograph ever taken. It’s a portrait of Caine taken by photographer David Bailey (inspiration for a movie that’s the epitome of 60s cool, Blow Up), in 1965, during the promotional period for The IPCRESS File. It’s one of my favorite portraits ever taken, and for the reasons that Salon journalist Charles Taylor elaborates upon in a 2000 profile of Caine:

The iconic image of Michael Caine is probably best summed up by a 1965 David Bailey photograph recently reprinted in his book “Birth of the Cool.” In it, Caine wears the black horn-rimmed glasses he donned to play secret agent Harry Palmer in three films that began with “The IPCRESS File.” An unlit Gauloise dangles from his mouth, and his black suit, tie and white button-down shirt are slim and immaculate. But there’s something unstable about the photograph, an unnerving aliveness that, 35 years later, still makes its meaning impossible to pin down, cut loose from its era as much as Bailey’s chic portraits of other icons of ’60s Brit cool — Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger, even the Kray Brothers — are contained by their times. The portrait is bordered by the edges of the black frame, but Caine’s eyes make you feel as if you’re the one who has been nailed to the wall. Steady, cool to the point of frigidity, they look as if they’re glowing from within their partially shadowed sockets; the long eyelashes that frame them might be tiny laser beams. Caine’s impassive expression and ray-gun orbs don’t offer the certainty of either kindness or cruelty but something far more unsettling: the sensation of being coolly appraised, of having each action or utterance totted up and held to your credit or debit.

From London’s National Portrait Gallery, here’s the original:

Michael Caine by David Bailey

A photograph that evokes that much cool is practically begging for homages. And there are plenty around:

And here are some artistic interpretations:

In November of 2004, to coincide with the release of the remake of Alfie, Arena Magazine commissioned Bailey to recreate his earlier Caine photo with actor Jude Law for the cover. The cover subsequently won a best cover of the year award from Campaign.

Jude Law by David Bailey

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: August 3, 1965

It doesn’t take a detective to figure out Harry Saltzman’s game and to calculate what’s brewing in his British spy film, The IPCRESS File.

Having picked up a tidy packet as coproducer of the James Bond films and having found what appears to be a booming market for pictures about daredevil sleuths (vide Jean-Paul Belmondo’s as well as Sean Connery’s), he is obviously trying to start another with a good-looking chap named Michael Caine in this double-o-sevenish picture, which came to the Coronet yesterday.

And in one respect he has succeeded. He has built up the proper atmosphere in which a daredevil-challenging mystery might conceivably occur and a dauntless and daring detective might acceptably take wing.

His Techniscope setting of London, in which this espionage thriller takes place, is full of rich and mellow colors and highly official goings-on behind dark-paneled doors in old, gray buildings and in cozy bachelor digs and gentlemen’s clubs.

An air of mystery and menace to the very balance of scientific power seems to surround the pressing problem Civil Intelligence has to solve regarding the curious kidnapping and brainwashing—or braindraining, as they call it—of a slew of distinguished scientists. And the chaps who have to solve it seem eminently qualified.

There’s Dalby, chief of Civil Intelligence, a bristly-mustached, guardsman type, quivering with efficiency and sarcasm as played by Nigel Green. There’s Ross, chief of Military Intelligence, who has curiously passed the buck, and, in Guy Doleman’s slippery portrayal, seems not quite worthy of trust.

There’s Carswell, the canny Scot analyst who assembles the IPCRESS file and is strangely bumped off shortly after. Gordon Jackson performs well in the role.

And, finally, there’s Harry Palmer, the key sleuth, played by Mr. Caine, not to mention several lesser secret agents, including one strange, incongruous girl.

Yes, there’s everything here to charge the large screen with the toniest spy-film atmosphere, and the director, Sidney J. Furie, has added to it with his flashy camera style.

Fast, fluid, candid shooting; startling close-ups of telephones, traffic lights, train wheels; eyes and faces seen through slits in doors make for sheer physical excitement and a feeling of things happening. The IPCRESS File is as classy a spy film as you could ask to see.

But somehow Len Deighton’s story of this running down of a gang of scientist body-snatchers gets confusingly out of hand as it tumbles and swirls in the direction of a gadgeted sweatbox in which the hero’s mental reflexes are relentlessly conditioned under stress.

Suspense and even attention are allowed to lag by the script, which Bill Canaway and James Doran have written. There are too many yawning holes in it.

And for all Mr. Caine’s casual manner—for all his scholarly and amiable air—he just doesn’t ooze the magnetism that would make him an irresistible sleuth. He is simply too much of an esthete. He loves Mozart, cooking, and books as much as he loves—well, temptation of the sort introduced by Sue Lloyd.

There may be a place in the affections of some filmgoers for a genteel cop—for one who can cook up a stew as well as a turmoil. But this one will never take the place of Bond.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

I’ve spent the evening relaxing after a long, stressful half-week, watching one of my favorite movies, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). While watching, it occured to me that the film has much in common with The IPCRESS File. Consider: IPCRESS, because of it’s subject matter and the period in which it was released was inevitably compared to the Bond films; Brazil was a dystopian sci-fi art piece debuting only three years after Blade Runner, and therefore is often compared to same. Both feature government employees plagued by paperwork—Harry Palmer and his nineteen L101 forms, Sam Lowrie and the B58/732 (which should actually have been a T47/215)—and bureaucracy that hinder their achievements. In their treatment of the mundane, both films subvert the concept of the hero, and strike a note closer to reality and likely to the lives of viewers than their counterparts in Bond and Deckard.

In the case of Harry Palmer, this has much to do with the source material, the novel by Len Deighton. But surprisingly, where other film adaptations tend to add fantastic elements and foreign locales, the creative team behind The Ipcress File film relocated scenes from the novel set in Lebanon and the South Pacific Tokwe Atoll to dark car parks and university classrooms in London. Producer Harry Saltzman had secured the rights to IPCRESS before the big screen debut of Bond in Dr. No (“Producer Harry Saltzman met with Len Deighton to discuss the film rights of The IPCRESS File prior to the opening of the first James Bond film Dr No, and nearly six weeks before the publication of the novel. Saltzman had received an advance copy of Ipcress from Deighton’s agent Jonathan Clowes, and arranged to meet the new author at Pinewood Studios,” says Deighton biographer Edward Milward-Oliver), filming didn’t commence until the Bond series was already a hit. In deciding the tone for the film, Saltzman came under heavy pressure from director Sidney J. Furie and set designer Ken Adams (who also worked on the 007) to distance IPCRESS from Bond.

Michael Caine as Harry Palmer

Perhaps this pressure, as much as budget considerations, contributed to the decision to restrict the film to London. I think this was a good decision, as were the slight changes to the narrator character brought to Harry Palmer by screenwriters Bill Canaway and James Doran, and actor Michael Caine, in his first starring role. In the novel, as we’ve discussed, the narrator is a bit of a Philip Marlowe type, cooly gliding along providing sardonic commentary when apt. In the film, without the benefit of first person narration, Caine’s dialogue and mannerisms, along with a few choice bits of exposition, create the character. He seems a bit greener than the character in the novel, and perhaps a bit more boyish. See the scene where Dalby gives him the tour of the building, as he “dances” with the lady in the hallway, can’t keep his hands off the dynamite plunger, plays around with the router, and makes a leering head-to-toe appraisal of every “bird” he sees.

Dalby reads from the B107, a sort of adult version of the “permanent record” we all feared as children, that Palmer is, “Insubordinate. Insolent. A trickster. Perhaps, with criminal tendencies,” noting that the last of those might be useful in this line of work. We learn from conversation with Jean later in the movie that Palmer was bailed out of detention barracks after, “making rather a lot of money out of the German army,” who, “insisted that the British army made an example of me.” We never learn exactly what Palmer did to deserve his arrest (he only tells Jean, “It’s very complicated”), though it apparently carried a long sentence. Fear of jail is one of the few motivators that (barely) keeps Palmer in line.

Perhaps because he is not narrating his own story, the Palmer of the film seems more mysterious than the narrator of the novel. One gets the feeling that these immature tendencies are a put-on, or a defense mechanism, as Jean says, “You’re not the tearaway [Dalby] thinks you are.” In a sense, The IPCRESS File is almost a coming-of-age story for the Palmer character. He goes from being a character who masks his inexperience with boyish bravado to one who has been stripped down to his core and found worthy. I’m avoiding the old onion metaphor here because Palmer doesn’t peel his onions, he dices them.

Sue Lloyd and Michael Caine

After transferring from the War Office to a Home Office counterintelligence group run by Major Dalby, Caine’s Palmer is assigned to find “Jay”, an opportunist who works in smuggling, in this case, smuggling top British scientists out of the country against their will. Palmer tracks Jay across London, has a tumble with his bodyguard “Housemartin,” follows a few seemingly false leads that provide important clues and winds up with two dead American agents on his conscience. Somewhere along the way, he starts a dalliance with his boss’s widowed secretary, demonstrates his gourmet skills, and gets kidnapped and brainwashed himself.

When Caine was cast in Zulu, director Joseph Levine famously wrote to his producers that his star was so green that he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Here, in his break-out role, Caine is more assured. In a movie where the success depends mostly on the details, his hands, his expressions, his smirks, are all note-perfect here. See, for instance, the scene in the library where Palmer first encounters Grantby, the way in which he grips the rail. A small gesture, but character-defining—this is not your typical secret agent. Or see the scene in the park where Palmer is forced to endure the Band of Irish Guards & Drums playing “The Thin Red Line,” where a slight glance away and grimace betrays the torture he’s going through. Perhaps Caine’s success in the role was due to his identification with the character. As Bromwell in Zulu, he donned an upper-class accent, but Caine, like Palmer, was working-class. Sharing a flat with fellow actor Terence Stamp, Caine allegedly read the book and felt that the character was written for him.

Caine is not alone in the quality of his acting. He’s backed by Guy Doleman as Colonel Ross and Nigel Green as Major Dalby. The two characters are presented as two sides of the same coin—as they stroll through the park discussing the “brain drain,” each shot shows them walking in perfect unison, their feet moving to the military lockstep. Earlier in the film, we’ve seen them exchange polite conversation, but the low-angle shots emphasize the battle beneath the words. Of course, they’re not exactly the same—by the end, one of them will be revealed as a traitor—but to Palmer, both are controlling, deceptive, and, in a sense, enemies. Doleman, as Ross, has the same detached aloofness, the same derisive wit as Palmer, but has the experience to know when to keep mum. Green, as Dalby, stays cool except for a few awkward outbursts (“I shall bite you, Palmer!”). A true appreciation of Green’s talent comes in the second viewing, with foreknowledge of the film’s ending. Watch the changes in Dalby’s face as Palmer reveals each new bit of information in the IPCRESS case, and notice his diffusion, his redirection. All of the clues were there, subtly planted in Green’s performance.

In a way, parts of the character of Dalby from the novel are transferred to Gordon Jackson as Jock Carswell. Carswell here is nothing like the statistician of the novel, except in name, and instead provides the Palmer character camaraderie that in the novel was supplied by Dalby and Carswell’s assistant Murray. Carswell’s death in the film is, I feel, the first in the series of events that leads Palmer to treat his job, his attitude, and the IPCRESS case seriously.

Sue Lloyd as Jean Courtney

And then, of course, there’s the mysterious love interest, Jean Courtney played convincingly by Sue Lloyd. Lloyd is not the typical femme fatale. Her character seems a bit world weary, a widow, and in the end we never know if her feelings for Palmer were true or manufactured in response to orders. Lloyd, with her prominent smile lies and slightly tousled hair is a good fit. She’s not a supermodel masquerading as a nuclear scientist, as one might see in the Bond films, but is believable as an administrative assistant. There’s a lot of subtext in the scene where she tells Palmer good-bye, and grips him with the hand that still wears a wedding ring.

Much has been made of the Otto Heller’s cinematography in the film, and we’ll discuss this more at length later, but I wanted to note that, while much is made of Heller’s shooting through things, such as the phone booth or the overhead lamp, few people discuss the thematic effect of the shots. Often, the characters are isolated in the center or the corner of a screen by a post, or a slightly ajar door, or the cymbals of a hi-hat, and this visual isolation is representative of the situations of the characters. Palmer is confined by his fear of jail. Courtney is alienated from Palmer because she’s acting under orders. Jay somehow repeatedly survives the squeeze represented by the cymbals. (There are other cinematic elements / roles that have gone unmentioned, such as the score by John Barry, the set design by Ken Adams, but we’ll be covering those extensively in future posts.)

One might ask what The IPCRESS File is all about (♫ What’s it all about…Harry? ♫), and in the end, with the ouroborosian plot and an unresolved series of motives, one might be hard pressed to come up with an answer. But to try to limit an appreciation of this film to an understanding of the plot is to overlook the important stuff. The IPCRESS File is about the characters and their situations. It’s about the grey (both in color and in morality) world of government and espionage, it’s about subverting the rules of the system and rising above or sinking below expectations, and it’s about the loneliness felt by people who can’t trust anyone around them. Like the renegade heating-and-air-conditioning terrorist in Brazil, the brainwashed scientists in IPCRESS are MacGuffins acting in service of a film about the victims of bureaucracy.

Despite reportedly being somewhat flighty (both in the figurative and literal sense), director Furie oversaw what has become a classic of the thriller genre, a rare film in which all of the pieces fit together perfectly. If the sequels to the first Harry Palmer outing seem lacking in comparison, it’s because The IPCRESS File is hard to top—some say it’s among the best spy films ever made.

One question to leave you with, and one which I ponder on every viewing of the film: In the end, does Palmer completely overcome his programming? Or is he still following orders? Does the recall provided by the pain allow him to exercise free will, or does it just give him the clarity to properly, “Shoot the traitor”?

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

When considering the mise en scène of a film, one of the easy things to overlook is typography. But to the trained eye, the wrong typeface or improper kerning can be as infuriating as an onscreen guitar player who isn’t plugged into the amplifier. In the same vein, the proper typeface can enhance a scene, subconsciously letting the viewer know that the creators of the film put some thought into the stylish details.

For instance, here are a few directors renowned for their use of the classic typeface Futura Bold (the first six screengrabs are taken from typeface designer Mark Simonson, who has also written an incredible series on typefaces, anachronistic and otherwise, in cinema and television).

#1 – Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

#3 – Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

(My friend Amedeo, playing young Richie Tenenbaum in the still above, is all grown up and has a cool webcomic called Justitia — check it out!)

#3 – Sidney J. Furie, The IPCRESS File (1965) ???

Dalby’s office utilizes Futura Bold in much of the signage for their fake operations:

And I believe it’s Futura that provides the type for Palmer’s War Office field report:

The badguys, however, use what I believe is Gill Sans Bold to label their magnetic tapes:

Col. Ross has a bold, sans-serif typeface for the nameplate on his door (I don’t think this is either Futura or Gill Sans, but it’s in keeping with the same style):

And Dalby’s “Domestic Bureau” has, on the outside, a more traditional look:

I wish the credits and logos of the film had kept the same geometric, modern style, but instead are in a stencil typeface. I do like that red circle and the bold white letters that announce the title though:

Any ideas on what the unidentified typefaces might be? Let us know in the comments below!

EDIT: Mark Simonson kindly writes to offer his opinion that the brass sign is a version of Weiss Antigua (note the telltale u), and that the letters on the door seem similar to Beton.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

First, a pair of quick notes. First, I hope you all are reading Horse Under Water, as I am, to prepare for our next round of conversation. Second, Mark Simonson was kind enough to provide a few more typeface suggestions for yesterday’s post. If you want to make your own Dalby Domestic Employment Bureau sign, give the post a look-see.

As noted in our recent review of The IPCRESS File, scenes involving the foreign locations in the novel were rewritten to take place in London. Today, I’ve spliced together a selection from the audiobook (read by Robert Whitfield) and the film that demonstrate how the screenwriters approached the relocation. In the book, this scene is an action-packed bust out set on a night road in Lebanon. This scene also demonstrates the differences between the Dalby of the novel, who gets right into the thick of things with sticky bombs in hand, and the Dalby of the film, who for the most part stays in the car.

The novel presents the take-back of Raven as a violent surgical strike in the midst of the desert, whereas the film shows careful, choreographed procedure in a London carpark. Which do you prefer? Take a look:

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

In our round-up of IPCRESS File posters, I posted two that, until today, I thought were the same with elements rearranged and glasses drawn afterward:

As you can see, I was mistaken. They’re clearly not the same — the faces hold different expressions, the hand pulling the jacket is present in one, but not the other, and the color pallette is different. The two posters, drawn by different unknown (does anyone have credit information for these posters?) artists used the following publicity photo as reference:

I asked Kees Stam of the Harry Palmer Movie Site if he knew the origin of the pic, but his best guess is that it was a promotional still made before the film was shot (he even has a promotional postcard featuring the image, which I think can be seen on this page of rare IPCRESS File stills).

So the thought that this still was shot early in the planning of the film might solve the mystery of why Harry isn’t wearing his specs in this pic. In any case, he’s not going to hit anything with that gun. I’ve seen how bad his vision is.

Through July, or at least until I run out of things about which to talk, we’ll be looking at the Harry Palmer series of novels (in which the character doesn’t actually have a name), their author — Len Deighton, the films based on them, the star of those films — Michael Caine, and the television movies that followed. I will be re-reading the whole series of novels, re-watching the films, and giving my thoughts on all I encounter. I’ll inevitably be drawing heavily on the collection of Kees Stam, author of The Harry Palmer Movie Site, and Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier, and other odds and ends that I’ve turned up over the years.

The Ipcress File Soundtrack

John Barry’s theme for The IPCRESS File has an interesting place in the genealogy of the thriller score, both built on the work of the past, and, as with his scores for the 007 movies, influencing the future.

e|--7--7-7---7--|
B|--8--8-8-8-8--|
G|--9------9----|
D|--9-----------|
A|--7-----------|
E|--0-----------|

[See full tablature]

According to Barry in Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979, Barry’s score was influenced by Anton Karas’ zither work in one of the earliest espionage classics, Carol Reed’s The Third Man:

Like Bond, Palmer had the benefit of spying to a John Barry score. Along with The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The IPCRESS File represents Barry’s only significant non-Bond spy scoring. The composer made a distinct effort to differentiate the Palmer sound through mood and, most noticeably, instrumentation. Barry avoids the bombast of a typical Bond score by using smaller scale orchestration featuring vibes, piano, guitar, and most notably, a cimbalom (a melancholy-sounding stringed instrument traditionally played by Hungarian Jews or gypsies).

“The IPCRESS File was like my homage to The Third Man,” Barry recounted. “I knew that was how I wanted to do it from the start, but obviously I wasn’t going to use a zither.” (Pan Macmillan, p. 170)

Some of IPCRESS‘ quieter passages that rely on trombone, French horn and the piano’s lower register would not sound out of place on Thunderball, but the general absence of shock and awe rhapsodies helps differentiate IPCRESS from the Bond scores. In fact, some of the jazzier sections wouldn’t sound out of place on one of the crime jazz scores of the ’50s. And, years later, some of the murkier cues turned up on the exemplary trip-hop compilation Coffee Table Music. Among that album’s contributors was Grantby, a British production duo named for the villain in The IPCRESS File. The score is the most memorable of the three Palmer soundtracks.

After IPCRESS, the cimbalom became a mainstay of the serious thriller, turning up in Michael Small’s score for Klute, Lalo Schifrin’s for The Eagle Has Landed, and Roy Budd’s theme for The Sandbaggers, and was also featured in Barry’s theme for The Persuaders, which, like IPCRESS, featured the work of John Leach (who wrote a history of the cimbalom that can be found, if you have access, on JSTOR). The cimbalom was originally supposed to be featured in Barry’s score for King Rat, but the American cimbalom player couldn’t hack it, so the theme was played on a guitar instead.

Rumor has it that producer Saltzman wanted to separate the composer from his volatile director, Sidney J. Furie, but that the two met in secret and Barry hummed the score he’d so far completed. In Royal S. Brown’s
Overtones and Undertones, Barry says that his music was inspired by the different take on the thriller that Furie was making:

All the Bond scenes were all loud noises and up close. But in The IPCRESS File, Sidney Furie did this lovely fight scene outside of the Albert Hall, where they’re in the distance, on the top of the steps, and I have that arpeggio music going against it, and it was wonderful. Because you saw these two stupid men. It made you realize how stupid physical violence is. It had such a different effect, and I think a very penetrating effect, from what violence in the movies is all about.

Barry’s IPCRESS theme didn’t only have an effect on film score composers, but on contemporary electronic musicians, who often sample the cimbalom riff. For instance, the spytronica band Portishead use Barry’s work as the starting point for their song / short film To Kill a Dead Man:

The original release of The IPCRESS File on Decca Records featured an essay on Barry’s role in creating the spy music genre:

With the growing popularity of the “spy” novel, depicting the world of intrigue and violence of the secret agent, a new sound was born in contemporary music. One of the leading and most successful exponents of this new sound is John Barry, a 31-year-old composer of prolific output, who has soared to the pinnacle of his profession through his brilliant and imaginative writing for television and films.

His most recent achievement was his score for “Goldfinger,” the third in the James Bond 007 series starring Sean Connery still breaking box office records wherever it is played. This exciting and provocative score with its plentitude of inventive ideas was perfectly related to every mood and aspect of the film. The music, like the picture, was an immediate success, and the sound track album attained the number one position in the national best selling LP charts.

John Barry’s score for The Ipcress File will surely achieve the same kind of success.

Unlike the Bond films, The Ipcress File is not set against some exotic background with glamorous women and preposterous villains. This is the story of an anti-hero, played out against everyday settings in London, where a secret agent seems only unusual by the ordinariness of his protagonists.

It is the story of kidnapped scientists, of brain washing, and of the suspect undercover men of great power who will stop at virtually nothing to accomplish their diabolical deeds. The music of John Barry helps to create moods that are as exciting as they are unusual for this film. His effects are striking, urgent, compulsive, sinister–and even haunting–and are achieved through the use of a harp, flutes and the unusual Hungarian instrument called the cymbalum.

One of the reasons for the success of John Barry is that he makes the unusual acceptable. His compositions, particularly those for “Goldfinger” and The Ipcress File, and television shows (like “The Human Jungle,” a highly popular and successful series) introduce us to sounds that seem almost esoteric, yet they are never less than contemporary.

John Barry is a composer who is very much a part of the everyday scene, yet a man who is constantly moving ahead in his work. He is as experimental as he is practical and precise, and his music is as expressive and economical as it is rich in text and mood. Not so many years ago John Barry was playing with a beat group in London’s reknowned Soho, but since then his progression has been almost meteoric. He became widely known with his own group, The John Barry Seven, which did the exciting and colorful backings for the hit records of Adam Faith. From that period in his career he has never looked back, and few composers are more in demand for television and motion picture scoring than he.

“The Ipcress File” is the latest brilliant composition from this inventive and imaginative talent; and shortly John Barry will be in Hollywood to write the music for yet another major production. Here is a young man who has already achieved fantastic success in the world of music and who is destined for even greater success in the future: JOHN BARRY!

And here, in case you’d like to play along at home, is John Barry’s theme from The IPCRESS File:

I’d planned to have a recording of my own, demonstrating the correctness of my tablature, but unfortunately, my recording computer died shortly into my first draft. Here’s 33 seconds of a loosely edited guitar version of The IPCRESS File, played by yours truly:

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