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.

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.

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.

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.

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”?