Sorry for my recent absence. As a good secret agent, I’ve got to keep my cover identity going. Over the past few weeks, that’s meant two things — starting another semester in the PhD program, and updating the site of one of my web clients, who had a movie debut on Friday.

Now, let’s get down to….

We’re now entering month three of our Harry Palmer Files, which at the beginning was supposed to end at the close of July. So far we’ve only covered one book in the series, and I hope we haven’t micro-analyzed to the point of driving our readers away! We’ll be moving on from The IPCRESS File after today.

Next up on the list is Horse Under Water, and we’ll be announcing a contest soon. So if you haven’t started reading, you’d better get started!

Today, though, I want to share some cover songs I’ve turned up of The IPCRESS File theme. Originally by John Barry, this one was covered both at the time of the movie release, and more recently by contemporary artists. Here are a few versions for you:

Billy Strange (From Secret Agent File – The Big Sound of Billy Strange and His Guitar, 1965):

Jazz All-Stars (From Thunderball & Other Secret Agent Themes, 1965):

Roland Shaw Orchestra (From Themes For Secret Agents, 1966):

Parris Mitchell Strings With Brass (From Secret Agent Themes, 1967):

The Spotniks (From Something Like Country, 1972):

Burt Blanca (From Rock n’ Roll Revival, Vol. 4, 1992):

Laika and the Cosmonauts (From The Amazing Colossal Band 1995, ):

The Torpedoes (From Good For the Country, 1996):

Pierre Vervloesem (From Plays John Barry, 2002):

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.

Here’s a collection of advertisements for the film found in the theater listings of the New York Times in 1965-1966:

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.

Paul Beaumont at The Harry Palmer Movie Site message board informs us of the recent passing of IPCRESS File screenwriter James Doran. Doran, along with the late W.H. Canaway, was nominated for a BAFTA for his work in adapting Deighton’s novel for the screen. In addition to The IPCRESS File, Doran was a playwright and worked on numerous TV shows, but it was the 1965 film for which he is best known.

The Times obituary for Doran can be read at the Times Online.

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.

Ipcress File cover with Michael Caine

“You have to remember I saw my first movie at fifteen; I’ve had to make up for lost time. The first film I saw was on television, The IPCRESS File; I loved the way Michael Caine broke eggs for an omelette.”

“Broke eggs?”

Kadi nodded. “Tenderly. I’d never seen a man cook before.”

– From Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer by Dorothy Gilman

The world first met the “Harry Palmer” character in 1962, when England was then in the midst of a mod revolution led by, as culture studies scholar Dick Hebdige says, “working-class dandies.” Mod men wore their hair longer, held exacting tastes in slim Italian suits, and played with concepts of androgyny in their personal appearance. Hebdige, in his Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things refers to Palmer as, “a fictional extension of mod,” with his preference for food, clothes and cigarettes from France and Italy—the “continental cool” (75).

But the heroes of films at that time were still rugged, handsome, tough, with no time for cooking. Caine, writing in his autobiography, What’s it All About?, says that the filmmakers were overly concerned with playing down any aspect of the character that could be deemed homosexual (175):

Sid Furie the director and Harry [Saltzman] went off to ‘de-gay’ my role in the script. The supermarket cart problem had already been solved by having me use mine as a weapon. The glasses were satisfactorily ‘butched up’ by having Sue Lloyd, who played the romantic lead, ask me if I always wear glasses. I say, ‘I only take them off in bed,’ she looks at me for a moment, then reaches forward and takes them off.

But Caine as Palmer, and shortly after, Caine as Alfie, helped redefine the concept of the masculine Brit. Andrew Spicer writes in his Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema that:

Critics were reserved about Sidney Furie’s over-ingenious ‘eavesdropping’ style of direction, but admired the film’s freshness and contemporaneity, the ‘current bachelor neatness’ of Palmer’s flat, and a working-class figure whose ‘Cockney vowels’ did not preclude an appreciation of Mozart and champignons. The role established Caine as a major star and a new type whose attraction was defined by Penelope Gilliatt: ‘Intransigence and opportunism are as central now to sex-appeal in English male acting as charm and height used to be. Make a crack, cheat the boss, expect nothing, go for the lot, and never commit murder except on expenses. The girls fall like skittles.’

Followed by the androgyny of the glam period, the Palmer character seems much closer to the John Wayne end of the spectrum of masculinity. Indeed, Caine feels that, ironically, the character once seen by Saltzman and Furie as too homosexual now serves as the icon for British manliness. As he told the LA Times in 1999:

“If you think of ‘The Italian Job,’ ‘Get Carter’ and ‘Alfie,’ then to young English guys now I represent English heterosexual masculinity without any doubts. You don’t look at me and say, I wonder if he’s gay? You look at me and think, he’s a geezer [regular guy], he’s one of us.