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Home , Claire Bloom, Edge of the City, Five Branded Women, Irving Ravetch, Martin Ritt, Norma Rae

February 22, 2011 (XXII:6) , THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1965, 112 min)

Directed by Martin Ritt Written by Paul Dehn, Guy Trosper, John le Carré (novel) Produced by Martin Ritt Cinematography by Oswald Morris Edited by

Richard Burton...Alec Leamas ...Nan Perry Oskar Werner...Fiedler Sam Wanamaker...Peters George Voskovec... East German Defense Attorney Rupert Davies... George Smiley Cyril Cusack... Control Peter van Eyck...Hans-Dieter Mundt

MARTIN RITT (March 2, 1914, , New York – December 8, 1990, Santa Monica, California) directed 28 films and: 1989 Stanley & Iris, 1987 Nuts, 1985 Murphy's Romance, 1983 Cross Creek, 1981 Back Roads, 1979 , 1978 Casey's Shadow, 1976 , 1974 , 1972 Pete 'n' Tillie, 1972 Sounder, 1970 , 1970 The Molly Maguires, 1968 The Brotherhood, 1967 Hombre, 1965 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1964 , 1963 which are 1982 The Dark Crystal, 1981 The Great Muppet Hud, 1962 Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man, 1961 Caper, 1980 Just Tell Me What You Want, 1978 The Wiz, 1977 , 1960 5 Branded Women, 1959 The Sound and the Equus, 1976 The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, 1975 The Man Who Fury, 1958 The Black Orchid, 1958 The Long, Hot Summer, Would Be King, 1974 The Man with the Golden Gun, 1974 The 1957 , 1957 ,and The Split Odessa File, 1974 “Bram Stoker's Dracula,” 1973 The Second (1953). MacKintosh Man, 1972 Sleuth, 1972 Lady Caroline Lamb, 1971 Fiddler on the Roof, 1970 Scrooge, 1968 Oliver!, 1967 The JOHN LE CARRÉ (David Cornwell, October 19, 1931, Poole, Winter's Tale, 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, 1966 Stop the Dorset, England, UK) is a former member of the British Foreign World: I Want to Get Off, 1965 The Spy Who Came in from the Service who started writing novels in 1961. He has published 21 Cold, 1965 Life at the Top, 1965 The Hill, 1965 The Battle of the of them, and most have been done as films or television Villa Fiorita, 1964 Of Human Bondage, 1962 Lolita, 1961 The miniseries: 2011 “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,”, 2005 The Guns of Navarone , 1960 The Entertainer, 1959 Our Man in Constant Gardener, , 2001 The Tailor of Panama, 1991 “A Havana , 1959 , 1958 The Roots of Heaven, Murder of Quality,” 1990 The Russia House, 1987 “A Perfect 1957 A Farewell to Arms, 1957 Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Spy” 1984 The Little Drummer Girl, 1982 “Smiley's People,” 1956 Moby Dick, 1956 The Man Who Never Was, 1953 Beat the 1979 “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, 1973 “Endstation”, 1969 Devil, 1952 Moulin Rouge, 1950 Cairo Road, and 1950 Golden The Looking Glass War, 1966 The Deadly Affair, and 1965 The Salamander. Spy Who Came in from the Cold. ...Alec Leamas (10 November 1925, OSWALD MORRIS (November 22, 1915, Hillingdon, Middlesex, Pontrhydyfen, Wales, UK—5 August 1984, Céligny, Geneva, England, UK) won a Best Cinematography Oscar in 1972 for Switzerland) appeared in 69 films and TV programs, some of Fiddler on the Roof. He has photographed 57 films, some of which were "Ellis Island" 1984, Nineteen Eighty-Four 1984, Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—2

"Wagner" 1983, Circle of Two 1980, The Wild Geese 1978, The Longest Day, 1961 The World in My Pocket, 1959 The Rest Is Medusa Touch 1978, Equus 1977, Exorcist II: The Heretic 1977, Silence, 1959 Rommel ruft Kairo, 1956 Attack, 1955 Mr. The Klansman 1974, Massacre in Rome / Rappresaglia 1973, Arkadin, 1953 , 1950 Furioso,1943 Hitler's Bluebeard 1972, The Assassination of Trotsky 1972, Under Milk Madman, 1943 Action in the North Atlantic, 1943 Five Graves to Wood 1972, Anne of the Thousand Days 1969, Candy 1968, Cairo, Lt. Schwegler, and 1943 Hitler's Children. Where Eagles Dare 1968, Boom! 1968, The Comedians 1967, Doctor Faustus 1967, The Taming of the Shrew 1967, Who's “Martin Ritt”, from World Film Directors, Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 1966, The Spy Who Came in from the Vol. II. Ed. John Wakeman. The H.W. Cold 1965, The Sandpiper 1965, What's New Pussycat 1965, Wilson Co., NY, 1988. 1964, The Night of the Iguana 1964, Becket 1964, Zulu American film, theatre, and television 1964, The V.I.P.s 1963, Cleopatra 1963, The Longest Day 1962, director, actor and producer, born in New Ice Palace 1960, Look Back in Anger 1959, "The York City, the son of Morris and Rose Ritt. Show" 1956, “Performer” 1956, 1956, The His father was a Russian Jew, educated in Rains of Ranchipur 1955, Prince of Players 1955, The Robe Switzerland, who was serving as a second 1953, The Desert Rats 1953, My Cousin Rachel 1952, mate with the Hamburg-American line when Waterfront Women 1950, and Women of Dolwyn 1949. he emigrated to America. His mother was a theatrical agent and an uncle was a gypsy dancer “good enough CLAIRE BLOOM...Nan Perry (February 15, 1931, London, to play the palace in New York.” Martin Ritt grew up in New England, UK) has appeared in 113 films and TV programs and York on the Lower East Side and distinguished himself at Dewitt series, most recently as Queen Mary in The King's Speech, 2010. Clinton High School more as an all-round athlete than in the Some of the others were , 2009-2010 “, 2006 “The classroom. According to Jean Harmetz he was “a jock—a barrel- Chatterley Affair,” 2004 Daniel and the Superdogs, 2004 “Law chested, tough battering ram with bruised knuckles whose goal, & Order: Criminal Intent,” 1995 Mighty Aphrodite, 1995 Mad if he had one, was to coach football when he was too old to play Dogs and Englishmen, 1993-1995 “As the World Turns,” 1989 it.” After a stint at Rhodes Preparatory School in New York, he , 1985 Déjà Vu, 1982 “,” went on with an athletic scholarship to Elon College in 1981 “Brideshead Revisited,” Julia (1981), 1979 “Oresteia,” Burlington, North Carolina, where he was a boxer and a good 1977 Islands in the Stream, 1969 The Illustrated Man, 1968 halfback. Charly, 1965 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1961 “Anna No longer content with success as an athlete, Ritt left Karenina”, Through a Dark Glass (1961), 1959 Look Back in Elon ambitious for a career in law and enrolled at St. John’s Anger, 1958 The Brothers Karamazov, Beauty and the Beast University, then in Brooklyn. He made his stage debut one (1958), (1957), 1952 Limelight, and 1948 The summer vacation as Crown in Gershwin’s and at Blind Goddess. about this time met , a decisive influence. Ritt joined Kazan as a member of Lee Strasberg’s Group Theatre and that OSKAR WERNER...Fiedler (November 13, 1922, Vienna, Austria socialist and Stanislavskyan institution converted him from a law – October 23, 1984, Marburg an der Lahn, Germany) appeared in student into an actor “overdosed on the class struggle.” His first 28 films and TVepisodes, the last of which was 1976 Voyage of assignment for the Group was to coach Luther Adler for his role the Damned. Some of the others were 1975 “Columbo,” 1968 as a boxer in Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy, in which Ritt had a The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1966 Fahrenheit 451, 1965 The Spy walk-on part himself….After serving for a time as understudy to Who Came in from the Cold, 1965 Ship of Fools, 1955 The Life John Garfield, he appeared in a number of Group productions and Loves of Mozart, 1955 The Last Ten Days, 1949 Eroica, including Planet of the Sun (1938), The Gentle People (1939), 1939 Hotel Sacher, and 1938 Geld fällt vom Himmel. and Two on an Island (1939). Ritt served in World War II in the US Army Air Force CYRIL CUSACK...Control (November 26, 1910, Durban, Natal, but continued to act. He appeared in The Eve of St. Mark (1942) South Africa – October 7, 1993, London, England, UK) appeared and in Moss Hart’s tribute to the Air Force, Winged Victory in 126 titles, some of which were 1993 “The Young Indiana (1943), repeating his performance in ’s film Jones Chronicles,” 1989 My Left Foot, The Tenth Man (1988), version of the latter. This was Ritt’s first involvement in the 1988 Little Dorrit, The Inheritance (1986), 1983 The World of cinema and at about the same time he made his debut as a theatre Don Camillo, 1981 True Confessions, Passage to India (1965), , director with an Air Force production of the 1934 warhorse 1973 The Day of the Jackal, 1971 Harold and Maude, 1971 Yellow Jack, with an all-soldier cast including such nascent stars Sacco & Vanzetti, 1971 King Lear, 1966 Fahrenheit 451, 1965 as . The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1959 Shake Hands with After the war Ritt returned to the theatre as a director, the Devil, 1956 The Man Who Never Was, 1951 Soldiers Three, his credits including Mr. Peebles and Mr. Hooker (1940), a 1947 Odd Man Out, and 1918 Knocknagow. successful revival on Broadway of Yellow Jack (1947), and Dorothy Heywood’s drama about a slave rebellion, Set My PETER VAN EYCK...Hans-Dieter Mundt (July 16, 1911, People Free (1948). In 1947, meanwhile, Ritt had branched out Steinwehr, Pomerania, Germany [now Kamienny Jaz, ] – into television, then in its “golden age” and an exhilarating July 15, 1969, Zurich, Switzerland) appeared in 91 films, some medium for a talented and versatile young man. He acted in over of which were 1969 The Bridge at Remagen, 1968 Shalako, 1968 one hundred fifty teleplays and directed at least one hundred Tevye and His Seven Daughters, 1965 The Spy Who Came in others. “Television was a very stimulating experience for me,” from the Cold, 1964 The Secret of Dr. Mabuse, 1962 The Ritt has said. “We were extremely free, because we worked for a Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—3 select and relatively limited public…..It was the time of the live church and temper the conclusion.” The result was an uneasy show, and I learned a lot from it.” compromise, partly redeemed by ’s fine This phase of his career ended abruptly in 1951, when performance, her first on the screen. he was dismissed by CBS, accused of “extremist tendencies,” Joanne Woodward also starred in Ritt’s next film, this and blacklisted. In fact Ritt had joined the Communist party in time opposite , in The Long Hot Summer (1958), his youth but had left for good the day after the Russo-German written by from two stories by . pact: “I’m a Jew and that was that.” Unlike some others, he Woodward, Newman, and Ravetch have made notable would not redeem himself by denouncing former comrades and contributions to a number of Ritt’s subsequent pictures, and this he says this was not “just a matter of courage. If I’d surrendered film also introduced a theme that has recurred in the director’s my balls, I would have had nothing—because that’s what my work—that of the outsider, at odds with society and its values. It work is all about.” was the first of many Ritt movies set in the south, a region that Unemployable in television, Ritt went through some has fascinated him ever since his college days in North Carolina. difficult years. He joined the staff of the Actors’ Studio, the Like its predecessor, however, The Long Hot Summer was educational wing of the Group Theatre, teaching Method acting weakened by a studio-imposed happy ending, and the critical to James Dean, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, , respect Ritt had earned with his first film began a five-year and , among others. In the theatre, Ritt says, the decline. McCarthyist poison “hadn’t filtered in so badly,” and he secured There was a mixed reception for The Sound and the an occasional stage part. His wife helped out by selling space in Fury (1959), another Faulkner adaptation and another study of a the Yellow Pages and Ritt, as always, played the horses with Southern rebel—a female one this time, played by Joanne some success. He resumed his career as a theatre director in 1954 Woodward. The Black Orchid (959), a Carlo Ponti production with revivals in Philadelphia of Golden that has widower Anthony Quinn Boy, Boy Meets Girl, and The Front courting widowed Sophia Loren in New Page, and returned to Broadway with A York’s Little Italy, was condemned for Memory of Two Mondays (1955) and his its “soap opera” ending. And Jovanka e much-praised production of Arthur l’altri (, 1960), a Miller’s (1955). drama made for In 1956 Ritt directed what about guerilla warfare in Yugoslavia, turned out to be his last stage play, was called a “shoddy piece of work.” Robert Alan Arthur’s A Very Special Ritt admits that he made this film Baby. The dramatist was impressed, and strictly for commercial reasons, and he later the same year, when he began work shared the critics’ low opinion of it. on a movie adaptation of his television Things began to pick up with play, Edge of the City, he recommended Paris Blues (1961), which stars Ritt to David Susskind, his producer. Newman, Poitier, and Woodward in an McCarthyism was beginning to abate somewhat and Ritt was interesting screen adaptation of Harold Flenders’ novel about hired as director at $250 a week. The film tells the story of a American musicians in Paris. The cast also includes Louis young army deserter () an aggressive and Armstrong and . And after Adventures of a suspicious misfit who begins to come to terms with himself and Young Man, a doomed attempt to make a movie out of society thanks to the friendship of a fearless black stevedore Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories, Ritt finally retrieved his (). Edge of the City (in Britain called A Man Is Ten reputation with the finest of his early films, Hud (1963). Based Feet Tall) was much discussed and warmly praised for the by Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. on a novel by Larry McMurtry, performances of its two stars and for its eschewal of any hint of it turns on the dilemma of Lon Bannon (Brandon de Wilde), a racial stereotyping: “The scene,” wrote Colin Young, “is between young man growing up on his grandfather’s ranch in two human beings, one lost and the other certain, rather than one contemporary Texas. He is confronted by two opposing models white and the other black, and when the gulf is closed between of adult behavior—his grandfather Homer (Melvyn Douglas), a them in is only accidentally important that one is a Negro.” This rancher of the old breed, fiercely high-principled, and his uncle success did not remove Ritt’s name from the blacklist, he says, Hud (Paul Newman), an extreme example of the Ritt outsider, “but I was considered to be ‘usable’ since I worked for very little selfish, greedy, amoral—and almost irresistibly charming. By the money. Several big California studios made me offers, and that’s end of the film the old man is dead, his beloved cattle destroyed how I happened to go to Hollywood.” by foot-and-mouth disease, his ranch in the greedy hands of his Ritt’s first film had persuaded him that the cinema son. But Lon, setting out to make his own way in the world, offered a better chance of dealing with issues that he considered knows which of his two models he is going to follow. important than the theatre, where the director is “the third man on Hud was universally admired for its tough-minded and the totem pole”—below the writer and the star. However, he totally uncompromising integrity. Liz-Anne Bawden wrote that soon found that in Hollywood “the old structures were still in “Ritt skillfully develops the complex conflict between Hud the place, and the director was required to bow to outdated cynical realist, and Homer, the ageing idealist, in bitter censorship.” No Down Payment (1957), his second film, written opposition yet bound by deep affection. Ritt’s direction and by and produced by for 20th Century- ’s photography of the cattle slaughter is Fox, attacked conformism, materialism, and sexual promiscuity masterly: no cattle are seen to die, but the tragedy is plain.” in the new suburbs, but the studio “insisted that I add a scene in Howe received an Academy Award for his photography and Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—4

Oscars went also to two of the cast—to Melvyn Douglas and to movies, and the same qualities have been evident in his , who gave an outstanding performance as Alma, the subsequent pictures, including Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), a Bannons’ tough, perceptive, warm-hearted housekeeper. tragicomedy starring Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett as a Ritt’s attempt to remake Kurosawa’s classic middle-aged couple struggling to cope with the death of their as a (The Outrage, 1964) was a failure, in spite of son. Howes ravishing camerawork. It was followed by an excellent Conrack (1973), about a white teacher’s battle against adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the ignorance in a black school in South Carolina, was followed by Cold (1965). Filmed in England, it demythologized the spy The Front (1976), an unexpectedly comic treatment of the thriller as convincingly as Hud had the western. Ritt drew from pernicious blacklist that had ended Ritt’s own television career. Richard Burton a perfectly judged and controlled performance as plays the hack who rents his undistinguished name the veteran agent who comes to see that the real enemy is not to blacklisted television writers, and (whose own some foreign power but anyone who believes that patriotic ends fearless clowning before the House Un-American Activities justify despicable means. Another version of the Ritt outsider is Committee is legendary) appears as a writer driven to suicide by the central figure in Hombre (1967), an offbeat Western in the McCarthy witch-hunt. In Casey’s Shadow (1978) Ritt, a which Newman plays John Russell, a white man raised by racehorse owner himself, indulged his passion for the sport with Apaches and now alienated from his own race. He is thrown an amiable entertainment about an impoverished Cajun family together by chance with a party of travelers who are attacked by who acquire a brilliant quarter horse. bandits, and finally sacrifices his life for members of a society Apart from Hud, the most admired of Ritt’s films is that has rejected him. Written by Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. Norma Rae (1979). Written by Ravetch and , and from a novel by Elmore Leonard, and beautifully photographed based on a true story, it studies the growth to political and by Howe the film is further distinguished by the character studies emotional maturity of a textile worker in a nonunion southern contributed by Frederic March, , Diane Cilento, mill town. Norma Rae (Sally Field) has little education and no Barbara Rush, and . The Brotherhood (1968) stars sense of purpose, but she has intelligence and spirit. Unlike her (who was also the producer) in a story about an parents, she is not afraid to complain about conditions at the mill, aging Mafia chief clinging to traditional and the bosses promote her to keep her notions of honor in an increasingly dirty quiet. Than a dedicated union organizer trade. (Ron Leibman) arrives from the North, In Ritt’s early films, the and under his guidance she begins to outsider is often an anarchic and take her own views seriously. destructive figure (like Hud), sometimes When Norma Rae finally a person whose values are finer than commits herself to the struggle for those of the materialist-conformist unionization, she does so in the face of society in which he finds himself (John mounting pressures from her bewildered Russell in Hombre). Increasingly, new husband, angry bosses, frightened however, as Sheila Whitaker points out, co-workers and local gossips. And in the Ritt’s work reflects a recognition of the end she wins, as Crystal Lee Sutton did futility of individual rebellion; in reality at a J.P. Stevens plant in North beginning with The Molly Maguires (1969), the “positive Carolina. There is a marvelous moment when the managers try to outsider” in his films “is one who aligns himself with genuine expel Norma Rae form the mill and the cause seems lost until, group action.” The Molly Maguires were a secret society of one by one, her co-workers begin to switch off their looms in Irish-American miners who fought and sometimes died for better protest, and the literally deafening noise of the mill dies conditions in the Pennsylvania coalfields in the 1870s. Sean gradually to one of the most beautiful silences in cinema. Sally Connery plays their embittered leader and Richard Harris the Field won both a Hollywood Oscar and best actress award at Pinkerton detective who infiltrates and betrays them. Some Cannes for her performance in this moving and exhilarating film. reviewers thought the film excessively somber in tone but Gray Ritt’s Cross Creek (1983) was a film adaptation of a Arnold, praising both Howe’s photography and Ritt’s direction, book by , author of The Yearling, and called it “beautiful to behold, a serene but breathtaking evocation chronicles the lives and conflicts of the people of rural Florida in of the American past.” It was a boxoffice failure, but Ritt himself the late 1920s. Mary Steenburgen plays the young author and (who coproduced it with its writer, , another foremost among the locals are and Dana Hill. Ritt’s veteran of the televisions blacklist) thinks it one of the best of his next film, Murphy’s Romance (1985), was a romantic comedy set films. in the contemporary West. It starred Sally Field and James After a rather static adaptation in 1970 of Howard Garner, with Garner’s performance earning him an Academy Sackler’s play The Great White Hope, about the black boxing Award nomination for best actor. champion Jack Johnson, Ritt scored a major success with Martin Ritt’s films extol the traditional virtues of Sounder (1972), about a black family of sharecroppers in the courage, integrity, tolerance, and loyalty, and he is equally South during the Depression. Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield traditional in his style, untouched by the nouvelle vague or starred and were nominated for Oscars, as was the film itself. It cinema vérité. He is not attracted by the fragmented narrative, was hailed as “a missing chapter from the Grapes of Wrath” and preferring to tell stories in straightforward order, from the “a lyrical, moving tribute to black experience.” Reviewers found beginning to the end. Ritt is admired as a scrupulous craftsman, in Sounder a warmth and optimism missing in Ritt’s earlier with an exact and exacting sense of place and period, and as an Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—5 exceptionally talented director of actors. Jon Voigt, the star of Martin Ritt understood le Carré’s vision and was the right Conrack, once remarked that “he always gives you something director to bring it to the screen. He had come of age in the actable. He directs the way he plays tennis, with a nice, clean socially conscious New York theater world of the 1930s and touch.” Ritt himself says: “I don’t think I’m a great artist….And 1940s. including stints in the radical Theater of Action and the I don’t think I’m a great entertainer, because I actually want to Stanislavsky-influence Group Theater. He served stateside in do something else besides. I want to see important movies World War II, mostly in Special Services as an actor and made….American films have grown up. But to grow up in your director, and was working on live TV shows, such as Danger, ideas isn’t enough. You have to know how to make movies. You when in 1952 he was blacklisted from the small and large have to be professional. That’s the way I’d like to be valued—as screens. (“It was known that a lot of my friends leaned toward a professional who knows his job and to hell with pretensions.” the left,” he once summarized. I had a humanistic bias.”) But Ritt was married in 1942 to the actress Adele Cutler and throughout the mid-1950s, he continued acting and directing in they have two children. The director is a stocky, powerful- the theater, and when he staged the first production of Arthur looking man with a moustache, short brown hair, and horn- Miller’s A View from the Bridge, he drew the attention of liberal rimmed glasses. The face, Michael Billington wrote, “massive talk show host and film/TV producer David Susskind, who hired and intelligent, suggests an odd alliance between Charles him to direct a movie version of Alan Arthur’s 1955 teleplay A Laughton and Mister Magoo; the hands are large and Man is Ten Feet Tall. It came to the big screen as Edge of the expressive.” Quiet and gentle in City (1957), a rough beauty of manner (though not always so a picture about the friendship on the set), he is said to be between a family man (Sidney laconic in speech, “lean and Poitier) and a drifter (John spare like the movies he Cassavetes) in a corrupt and directs.” He is a voracious and racist pocket of the New York catholic reader of everything docks. from Chaucer to comic books, and surprised one viewer with Ritt immediately proved an apt and casual quotation from himself the rare American Goethe. No one could be more director able to tackle generous in his appraisal of contemporary themes without younger directors, and he has melodrama or preaching. expressed his admiration for Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Indeed, when he made a movie condemning a cynical modern and Terence Malik among others. He is his own man, John Le cowboy, Hud (1963), audiences loved the character for his comic Carré believes, because “in a painful and ambitious life he has bluntness (and for Paul Newman’s dynamite performance). Ritt’s learned that his own judgment is the only one he can trust.” ability to build distinctive atmospheres—and give his characters time to catch their breath in them—made him simpatico with “True Ritt” by Michael Sragow. From the Criterion dvd of rural, often southern settings. His sureness liberated his actors. It The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 2008 enabled Newman, Patricial Neal, and Melvyn Douglas in Hud, Martin Ritt’s 1965 movie of John Le Carré’s first great novel and in The Great white Hope, (and first best seller), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson in Sounder, Geraldine Page in declares “a plague on all your houses” to capitalists, Pete’n’ Tillie, Rip Torn and in Cross Crek, James Communists, and ruthless intelligence operatives. It’s one Garner in Murphy’s Romance, Sally Field in Norma Rae, and, of espionage movie that neither comes on like gangbusters nor course Richard Burton in Spy to deliver Oscar-nominated sneaks up on you like a cat burglar. Instead, it creates an performances. (Neal, Douglas, and Field won their awards.) atmosphere of anguish, fear, and rage that intensifies each pause in the action and gesture of the actors, leaving viewers hanging Ritt could at times be heavy-handed, such as in the union- on every word of the sometimes cryptic, sometimes eloquent organizing drama Norma Rae. But like his artistic mentor Elia dialogue. Kazan (with whom, however, he parted ways over Kazan’s willingness to name names during the blacklist), he had a feeling Le Carré’s book arrived in 1963, at the crest of the transatlantic for characterization that imbued his best films with an irreducible James Bond fever: not only had JFK declared himself an Ian individuality. The Spy who Came in from the Cold is one of Fleming fan, but the movies Dr. No and From Russia with Love them. It follows the eternal question of whether ends can justify had already delighted series followers, and Goldfinger was right means to a nightmare conclusion: here, awful means alter around the corner. Le Carré’s view of espionage as an extension virtuous ends. Ritt’s use of suspense can’t be separated form his of the ugly, soul-grinding side of cold-war politics was more than underlying humanity. The movie doesn’t chill the soul or a slap at the Bond books’ Byronic derring-do and the movies’ paralyze viewers with dread. On the contrary. Its unblinking glamour, gimmickry and jet-setting. It read like an exposé of the realism heightens our hopes as well as our fears for its characters. spy game’s dirty little secrets, linking the spiritual and emotional Ritt hired three key talents—Burton, Claire Bloom, and the calamities of a burned out fifty-something British agent to the cinematographer Oswald Morris—who had previously worked crises of values that plagued East and West in the mid-twentieth together on the initial angry-young-man movie, Look Back in century. Anger (directed by Tony Richardson). Ritt knew he was making an angry-middle-aged-spy movie. He peopled the film with Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—6 adults who recognize or come to learn that their actions have him but says that Leamas should hear it from Control. The inner uneasy consequences. workings of the agency, or as le Carré calls it, “the Circus,” really are a game to this boy. Not to Control: when Leamas Burton, as agent Alec Leamas, transforms resignation and enters Control’s office, the atmosphere is hushed and ruefulness into something forceful, even magnetic. He uses his momentous, freighted with blandishments and threats. There’s stout body and bagged eyes to create a multihued miasma. Cyril something funny and unsettling about Control’s complaint that a Cusack, Oskar Werner, and Bloom nearly match him. Cusack, as secretary hasn’t warmed the pot when serving tea, just as there’s Leamas’s boss, “Control,” can give a simple intake of air hidden something empathetic and menacing about Control’s meanings. Werner brings refreshing jauntiness and a whiplike observation, ”We have to live without sympathy, don’t we? We brilliance to the role of an East German Jewish intelligence can’t do that forever. One can’t stay out of doors all the time. officer named Fiedler. Bloom exudes both naïveté and sensuality One needs to come in from the cold.” After goading Leamas as Leamas’s British Communist lover, Nan Perry. The director subtly about giving him a desk job and gauging the fierceness of achieves the seedy elegance essential to the intricate story’s his reaction, Control says, “I want you to stay out in the cold a impact with the help of his seamless ensemble. Morris’s keenly little longer.” modulated black-and-white camera work and the uncluttered, realistic production design of Tambi In the ensuing scenes, those who Larsen and Hal Pereira. What haven’t read the book must wonder Edmund Wilson wrote about a whether Leamas becomes a Raymond Chandler novel applies to drunken has-been or is merely this movie: “It is not simply a playing one to snag the attention of question here of a puzzle which has Mundt (Peter van Eyck), his East been put together but of a malaise German opponent. Burton is conveyed to the reader, the horror of remarkable in these scenes; he a hidden conspiracy.” The Spy Who knows that certain kinds of drunks Came in from the Cold boasts a fire enjoy playing rough and acting that flickers beneath the malaise. supervirile, so it’s hard to know Days after you see it, one of Burton’s distinctive ravaged looks when Leamas is putting everyone on, or where the put-on ends or sardonic verbal turns will surface in your consciousness. (Le and the real Leamas begins. As the action veers into the Carré himself had a hand in sprucing up the script.) When Burton Netherlands and East Germany, Burton and Ritt know just when declares to an East German interrogator, “I’m a man, you fool. to pull Leamas into focus. Burton’s expressions of irony, pride, Don’t you understand? A plain, simple, muddled, fatheaded disdain, and fright do something rare in a spy movie: they give human being. We have them in the West, you know,” what he the film a complicated consciousness. says is profound. Luckily, Ritt has the savvy and the wit to play the movie’s higher meanings close to Leamas’s vest. Just as Leamas draws on aspects of himself to create a plausible alter ego for a spy mission, Burton draws on aspects of himself to From the start, when Leamas, head of Berlin operations for create a fascinating Leamas. Burton, the Welsh miner’s son with British intelligence, waits at Checkpoint Charlie for one of his huge appetites for rugby and literature, and Ritt, the Russian- East German spies to cross over (and defect) to the West, this Jewish immigrant’s don with matching appetites for football and film’s superficial mysteries unfold with a deceptively formal, literature, should have had some basis for friendship. Instead, easy-to-read clarity that balances the underlying chaos. Morris’s they locked horns. The director had been dubbed “the Orson camera makes a geographic survey of official boundaries before tamer” for reining in on The Long, Hot Summer settling on the back of Leamas’s head as he stares through Ritt’s first hit. And he appeared to be cracking the whip on binoculars at the East German gate. Leamas responds with Burton, compelling him to work harder to do less, stripping him contempt to a CIA op who urges him to get some sleep. This of his elocutionary flourishes and the larger-than-life celebrity he weathered Brit views Americans as callow and presumptuous. was just beginning to enjoy. Without any cheap tricks, Ritt immediately puts viewers on the side of a man of experience who is also, underneath his crust, a Burton often credited his second wife, , with man of feeling. Crisp arc lights split the dead of night and mark teaching him the difference between stage and screen acting. But the way for Leamas’s imperiled agent. Unfortunately, they allow Taylor’s frequent presence on Ritt’s set contributed to the the East German guards a glaring view of him when they realize tensions. Bloom and Burton had been lovers at the Old Vic in the he’s made a break for freedom. The agent’s bicycle can’t race early 1950s and had reconnected during Look Back in Anger fast enough to escape their bullets. And the West German (1959), when Bloom, according to her memoir, Leaving a Doll’s soldiers can’t give him protective fire: they can fire back only if House, broke off their affair. Yet here was Burton, in the second they are fired upon. Ritt bookends the film with this tragedy and year of his marriage to Taylor, costarring with Bloom, who was another. In between he conducts a master class in the vitality of playing his romantic object. As an actor, Burton arrives at a sort bitterness. Leamas tries to live with his knowledge of the worst of mortified tenderness with Bloom that is unique in his humans can do—and his knowledge that he is a part of it. filmography, but the process wasn’t easy. Burton biographer Melvyn Bragg suggests that Ritt became Bloom’s protector in a Called back to Britain, Leamas drives into London with a slick cold war that developed between her and a closely watched young fellow from personnel who hints that a harsh fate awaits Burton, and in Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress, Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—7

Bloom hints at this special relationship when she writes that Ritt Martin Ritt worked steadily and successfully within the “was a big help to me.” She also ranks Ritt, Olivier, Richardson, Hollywood system for over thirty years. He was a highly Chaplin, and Cukor as her best directors. And Bloom here, with regarded professional—one who regularly brought in a Ritt’s help, does achieve an artistry that seems artless. She gives completed film on time and either on or under budget. Ritt liked Nan a generosity and kindness that are infinitely touching, the term professional and applied it to himself. He was not a whether she is reaching for sugar cubes to drop into Leamas’s tea proponent of the auteur theory; although he acknowledged that or realizing, with a jolt, that she’s been invited to East Germany the director was in charge, he refused to put his name above the not for a comrade exchange program but for a prosecution that title even when he had the clout and prestige to do so. involves her lover. This attitude explains in part why Martin Ritt’s name is not well known among filmgoers even though he had a sterling Of course, Ritt had reasons closer to home to imbue Bloom’s reputation in the film community and every “A list” actor wanted scenes with an intimate sympathy. The movie’s Nan Perry (Liz to work with him. Another reason for his lack of fame was an Gold in the book) is a sweet-natured librarian who comes to approach to filmmaking that highlighted the actor’s performance Communism out of youthful idealism—like many of Ritt’s instead of the director’s technique. Ritt was also an accomplished friends, and possibly Ritt and his wife, in New York in the 1930s teacher of acting, and ironically, his love for his actors and their and 1940s. Ritt may not have consciously seen The Spy Who craft accentuated their artistry and cost him recognition before Came in from the Cold as anything more than a faithful the public. His actors received twelve Academy Award adaptation of le Carré’s novel. But it is a highly personal film. It nominations while Ritt received only one. gets at more complicated issues of secular faith than his blacklist Because Ritt did not sign his films visually—Walter comedy-drama The Front, and in its own restrained way it covers Bernstein noted that Ritt made “integrity into a style”—he has more of the political spectrum. When Fiedler asks Leamas to become an interesting case. Despite one of the most productive articulate his philosophy and he responds with “I’m a man, you careers as a Hollywood director—directing or producing and fool,” or Nan tells him she believes in history and he laughs, the directing twenty-six films in thirty-three years—he remains movie resonates with the rueful humor of a director who’s nearly anonymous. Almost everyone has seen or admired The learned to distrust ideology and absolutes. Long Hot Summer, Hud, Hombre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Front, and Norma Rae, yet few know the director Although never hailed as a visual director, Ritt racked up some who made these films. mighty achievements with cinematographers like James Wong Ritt’s attitude toward his role as director and the Howe on Hud and The Molly Maguires, and John Alonzo, on theatrical/cinematic enterprise in general was influence d by his Sounder and Conrack. With Oswald Morris in The Spy Who three years as a member of the Group Theatre (1937-40) and the Came in from the Cold, Ritt uses grayness not as murk but as the life lessons inculcated in him by its directors, notably Harold ideal palette to depict precise shades of moral ambiguity. With Clurman. Almost fifty years after his Group Theatre days, Ritt this carefully calibrated range of tones, Ritt achieves a greater would still remember Clurman as “a deeply passionate man, variety of astringent comedy and drams than in any other of his committed to humanism, committed to America, committed to works, including a delightful dry satire of the clerking life— the importance of the artist, and I loved him.” In that same Leamas and Nan meet while working in a private library of interview he called Golden Boy, directed by Clurman, “the best psychic research. Leamas bullies Ashe (), the acted play I’ve ever seen.” gay Communist who first contacts him and offers money for In 1931 Clurman wrote, “We believe that the individual information, the way Bogart does Peter Lorre in The Maltese can achieve his fullest stature only through the identification of Falcon. The sequences that ensue with a variety of Communist his own good with the good of his group, a group which he agents escalate into increasingly blatant and absorbing power himself must help to create….” Ritt adhered to that philosophy games, culminating in the arrival of Werner’s always spruce and throughout a career that included acting and directing in the surprising Fiedler. Burton develops a rapport with Werner that theater, television, and the movies. He rejected the cult of the is comparable to the almost telepathic performing connection he director and embraced the notion of ”group” and community. had with Peter O’Toole in Becket. When the two have a talk in This was not only a working philosophy; the creation of the open air, the film itself seems to take a deep breath, before community became a thematic thread that runs throughout his turning into a brisk and unsettling courtroom drama. work. As a film director, Ritt liked to surround himself with people he trusted and valued…. Ritt may not have loved working with Burton, but as a director Ritt commented often that casting the right actor is 80 he must have loved Burton’s art. Burton’s Leamas is a great percent of the success of directing, but he was also an astute characterization that is also a great star performance. His Leamas teacher of acting who developed effective exercises and is like a Sam Spade who gets soft and goes to seed, a Mr. Rick techniques to bring out the proper emotions in his actors. without a plan to make things right. Burton brings heart as well as brains to Ritt’s most sophisticated movie: here, for one brief …Although Ritt and Kazan started their careers as close friends, shining moment, he became a Bogart for an age of their relationship was shattered by the House Committee on Un- disillusionment. American Activities investigations into film and television and the resulting blacklists, events that shaped both their careers and Fom Martin Ritt Interviews. Edited by Gabriel Miller. lives…Rejecting the explanation given by Kazan and others University Press of Mississippi, Jackson,2002. about political struggles within the Group Theatre, Ritt insists that he knew of no Communist cabals to take over the Group. He Ritt—THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD—8

notes that a few members were on the left but claims that most almost all human behavior. And only people with strong feelings were not. Kazan, Ritt felt, was motivated by “appetite”—he was can control their appetites. The other people don’t and they have not prepared to give up his success. to pay. We all have to pay finally. Still, Ritt remained admiring of Kazan’s talent, calling him the most “inventive” director to come out of the Group and “A Conversation with Martin Ritt.” Ronald Davis commenting that his greatest quality was “incredible judgment.” 1987 Even in 1986, speaking about Kazan filled him with emotion and Davis: Did you enjoy The Spy Who Came in from the Cold? regret: “We were very close. And I’ve never really gotten over Ritt: I enjoyed the film; I didn’t enjoy making it too much that because he was a great infuence in my life.” And while Ritt because [Richard] Burton and I didn’t get along. He was on the maintained that Kazan “shouldn’t be forgiven,” one gets the booze, and I’m one of those fellows who shows up early to work feeling that he was willing to hedge a little, as he did with and works hard and goes home, goes to sleep, and gets up the Clifford Odets. next morning. I don’t drink. It bothered me not quite as much, Ritt was insistent, however, that informing ruined both because it helped the part. Otherwise, it would have driven me Odets’s career and Kazan’s. “I consider [Kazan] one of the great crazy. There’s a guy who’s pissed on himself. And he’s very tragedies of the McCarthy period, because he was easily the most engaging, it’s difficult not to like him, but I didn’t like him. Very talented director of my time. And he’s produced nothing since engaging, funny, very bright, very socially oriented—everything then.” If this judgment seems overly harsh, statements Ritt made I would normally like very much, but he was a bum. I think he in various interviews show that he regarded informing as a knew it himself, and I think that’s why his talent never really did dramatic violation of the artist’s essential being: “For an artist, it the kind of work it should have done. We didn’t get along at all. I is the most dangerous thing in the world you can do. You can’t was making my first picture in a foreign country with a lot of deny who you are or what you are.” actors that I didn’t know. I had a terrible time convincing Michael Hordern to play a homosexual. It was not very vogueish “Martin Ritt and the Group Theatre” Stewart Stern at the time. He said, “What’ll I do? I’ll never get another part.” I 1986 said, “You’re going to be terrific in this.” I had been to the Casting…essentially…a very interesting case in point theater in London almost every night and I knew that a large was when I did The Spy who Came in from the Cold. I wanted section of the theater was dominated by homosexuals.. So I could Burton. I didn’t know why I wanted him. Because when I heard understand to some degree, but he wasn’t a homosexual. I could him speak I said to him on the first day of rehearsal, I said understand to some degree, his worrying about it. I said, “Mike, Richard, the key to this character is anonymity The key to any it doesn’t matter.” And he did, he got nothing but work after that spy is anonymity. And that voice of yours will bury us. And that picture and was one of the most employed actors in London. I was like taking a sweater away from Lana Turner. You took it all like the picture. In this town, nobody believed it, because nobody away. And I had a terrible time with that picture. And it started believed that a member of the CIA or any foreign service would that time when I started to take the voice away. And yet it was be as duplicitous as the English were. The picture did okay, it one of his best, if not his best, screen performance. We fought came out, he got nominated, but I don’t think it was truly about it all the time. He’s the reverse of Paul [Newman]. He had appreciated. But if you’re making subject matter which is before the equivalent of Marlon and he really pissed on himself. He its time….the best pictures I’ve made are the pictures that have should have been at least Olivier. Appetite ruined him totally. been nominated—with the exception of The Front and The Molly Booze, women, you know…money…I don’t think any of this Maguires, both pictures which I like very much, which did much can be discussed without mentioning appetite. It’s the basis of better in Europe than they did here.

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2011 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXII: Mar 1 Nicholas Roeg WALKABOUT 1971 Mar 8 John Mackenzie THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY 1980 Mar 22 Bertrand Tavernier COUP DE TORCHON/CLEAN SLATE 1981 Mar 29 Werner Herzog FITZCARRALDO 1982 Apr 5 Nagisa Ôshima MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE 1983 Apr 12 Stephen Frears THE GRIFTERS 1990 Apr 19 Jafar Panahi DAYEREH/THE CIRCLE 2000 Apr 26 Ridley Scott BLADE RUNNER1982

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