Playwright John Osborne
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.
A busy day today, so I’m only a couple of chapters into The IPCRESS File. How’s your progress coming at home? I wish it had occurred to me before yesterday that this series of posts could probably benefit from a “book club” style conversation. I hope that those of you who haven’t read The IPCRESS File will give it a chance, if you’re not already, and that those of you who have already read it are inspired to give the novel at least a refresher skim.
Today, I want to briefly touch upon a…I hesitate to call it a literary movement — perhaps more of a phenomenon or environment…that might help explain the anonymous character who would later be filmed as “Harry Palmer.” I won’t assume that the group of creators, sometimes dubbed “angry young men,” by the critics and press, or their works were a direct influence on Deighton, but that they were at least writing about the same social conditions. I had originally intended with this post to explore a number of different authors and works that would inform a reading of The IPCRESS File, but in researching and writing have found that an extended look at one work should do the trick:
John Osborne -- Look Back in Anger (1956)
Osborne is often hailed as the prototypical example of the “angry young man” writer. Indeed, the phrase was said to be coined by press officer George Fearon in response to Osborne’s 1956 play. Though there are earlier examples (Kingsley Amis’ titular character in Lucky Jim, for instance, or even in Graham Greene’s short story “The Destructors”), the lead character in Osborne’s play, Jimmy Porter, personifies the anger, as he spits acidic diatribes that stem from his hope for a better society and the cynical view that such hopes are futile.
These writers, and their characters, were of a generation of young British men who fought in the war, were treated somewhat equally in social status and class to that of their peers during their service time, received an education, and then promptly found that, post-war, nothing had really changed for them. Amidst the rubble of the bombings, England was rebuilding, and in that rebuilding, was changing. This wave of literature, which gave rise to so-called “kitchen sink” realist films, was part of that change. So, it might be argued, was the rise in popularity of the Liverpudlian Beatles.
The “heroes” of the “angry young man” are discontented with their place outside of the establishment, but are also sort-of in-betweeners, often having to reconcile their lower and middle-class upbringings and their upper-class educations. They struggle to find a place to be happy, without constantly feeling the pressure of those above them. Often, the characters were not so much angry as disillusioned and alienated. As Jimmy’s wife, Allison, tells her father in act two of Look Back in Anger: “You’re hurt because everything’s changed, and Jimmy’s hurt because everything’s stayed the same.”
The play opens with Jimmy, Allison, and their supportive lodger Cliff, and takes place entirely in their shared flat. Allison’s background is, if not upper-class then nearly so, and Jimmy comes from a working-class family. He, ironically, works in a sweets shop, a job for which his college education over-prepared him, and spends much of his time acrimoniously deriding post-war England and accosting his flatmates. Tensions arise from two developments: Helena, an equally upper-crust friend of Allison’s, arrives and creates a rift, and Allison slowly lets everyone know that she’s pregnant with Jimmy’s child, with Jimmy finding out last of all. In the end of the second act, Allison’s father arrives to take her home, after Helena places a rescue call, and by the beginning of the third act, the situation has seemingly changed completely though some things look familiar….
Here’s a clip with Kenneth Branagh as Porter, in a well-made “filmed play” version from 1989 (directed by Dame Judi Dench, also with Emma Thompson, Siobhan Redmond and Gerard Horan):
The play was made into a film in 1958, and in this case there is a direct connection to the later Palmer movies: Look Back In Anger, made by influential director Tony Richardson with Richard Burton and Claire Bloom, was one of the first achievements by producer Harry Saltzman, who would go on to produce the Caine films. Along with another Saltzman production, 1960’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (based on the novel by another “angry young” author, Alan Sillitoe), this adaptation of Osborne’s play would play a role kicking off the British New Wave film movement. And so, in a way, The IPCRESS File, coming in 1965, is a combination of Saltzman’s greatest successes to that point — the “kitchen sink” representation of the day-to-day life of a working class bloke, with the high tech gadgets and codenamed villains of the James Bond films.
(Another spy film connection that’s probably obvious — Burton and Bloom were, of course, the stars of Martin Ritt’s 1965 adaptation of LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. There’s more to just the casting, however. I can see Alec Leamas as an “angry middle-aged man” dealing with the same feelings of disillusionment.)
Look Back in Anger movie poster
In Deighton’s work, and later through the interpretation by Michael Caine, the “Palmer” character faces the same issues of class and not belonging. He responds not with anger, but with sarcasm and sass. As Andrew Spicer writes in his, Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema: “In the novels, [the Palmer character] is identified as a displaced ’scholarship boy’, a figure from a provincal university, resentful about the privileges conferred by birth, class, a public-school education and the Old Boy network, who dissociates himself from the Establishment by his cyncial humour” (77). Deighton himself was born in a workhouse (as you’ll recall from the documentary, because the hospital was full up), to a chauffeur and a part-time cook.
“Palmer” exists in that in-between — not upper-class, but not really lower-class anymore either — a state perhaps most acknowledged through his love of gourmet food. My favorite scene in the movie adaptation, which we’ll revisit later, is the grocery store scene in which Ross implies that Palmer is attempting to purchase status by favoring the champignons over the button mushrooms. Caine proves his upper-class tastes through his methodical food preparation, but betrays his roots every time he speaks in that Cockney accent.
I’m sure we’ll be talking more about these issues later, but I wanted to explore some of these thoughts as a basis for my reading of the novel. I’m eager to hear your thoughts on the subject as well (please comment!).
One last note of interest. Osborne, the angry young man who wrote Look Back in Anger wound up playing opposite Caine as one of the most laid-back, but dangerous villains ever to grace the screen in Mike Hodges’ 1971 film Get Carter. In his auto-biography, What’s It All About?, Caine describes Osborne as a personal hero, and says, “[He] was cast as the chief villain and he was marvelous. He had not acted much since his success as a writer and he really seemed to enjoy his role of the ruthless gang boss, even though he was not typical casting.”
