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Now, after nearly 30 increasingly ornate and preposterous Bond pictures, "Casino Royale" returns in a screen adaptation sporting a new
Bond in the person of Daniel Craig. (There was an earlier film version in 1967, an incoherent all-star atrocity
featuring no fewer than three Bonds and produced apart from the official series.
Not to mention a live-TV dramatization in 1954 with the bland Barry Nelson as 007 and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre.) Will it restore the
original's balance of manageably small-scale action and comparatively genteel
romance, or ride off in all directions in search of new eye-popping sensations?
Find out soon at a theater near you.
In the meantime, settle back with a martini (shaken, not stirred) and a
Balkan-Turkish cigarette from Morlands of Grosvenor Street and contemplate our
spy-movie heritage. For our purposes here, let's omit discussion of whether
anyone has seriously challenged Sean Connery at portraying Fleming's
silken super-agent (short answer: of course not!); indeed, omit Bond movies,
period. And while we're at it, let's pass over all the Alfred Hitchcock classics that demand a place on any
credibly ranked list of exalted spy flicks: "The 39 Steps," "North by Northwest," "The Lady Vanishes," "Foreign Correspondent," "Notorious," "Secret Agent," "Sabotage," "Saboteur" ... They're untoppable, and well known to
any video store browser. So here are 11 other worthy selections to entice you
away from your boxed sets of "Alias" and "24."
Let the Great Game begin ...
"Spies" (1928)
Fritz Lang's "Spies" is the granddaddy of all
espionage movies and the definitive meditation on the modern world as paranoid
nightmare. The direction is breathtakingly dynamic and audacious; in the
steel-trap precision of Lang's design, every scene, every geometric shot and
startling cut, contributes to the demonic energy. His images accumulate with
such uncanny clarity that, again and again in this silent movie, we "hear" as
well as see the connection between actions that aren't even occurring in the
same vicinity. Rudolf Klein-Rogge plays Haghi, a variation on Lang's
almost supernatural criminal genius Dr. Mabuse (whom Klein-Rogge also
portrayed). The mastermind's power is absolute. When, for instance, he wants to
punish a formerly trusted agent for failing him, not only does she disappear but
also every item in her apartment, including the electrical outlets! From its
whirlwind opening -- break-ins, assassinations and a hurtling daylight robbery
of government secrets from a moving car -- the film's hallucinatory intensity
never lets up for two-and-a-half hours. Part of its fascination lies in there
being barely any distinction between Haghi's totalitarian control of every
detail, and the director's.
"5 Fingers" (1952)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz won Oscars for "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949) and "All About Eve" (1950) but made an arguably even better movie a
couple years later. In this truth-based chronicle of "Operation Cicero," the
ambassador's valet at the British embassy in Istanbul during World War II
regularly makes off with diplomatic secrets and sells them to the Germans. The
situation is fascinating, with the envoys of warring nations making ultra-polite
nicey-nice in the neutral foreign capital, and the valet (James Mason, supremely suave) enlisting a countess
(Danielle Darrieux), the widow of his former master,
as his partner in crime. Even more tensile than the spy maneuvers are the sexual
politics -- an ongoing dance of power and eros exquisitely performed by Mason
and Darrieux. There never was a more urbane spy movie.
Next: More overlooked spies |
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