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The ipcress file spy films8/2/2023 ![]() ![]() Such a story could be ridiculously complicated, but thankfully, director Sidney J. ![]() ![]() Inter-departmental espionage seems as much a thing here as any international spy rings, with Ross trying to find out what Dalby is up to and vice versa. He does manage to pull office colleague Jean Courtney (Sue Lloyd), but even then, it seems a questionable relationship – at one point, they both accuse each other of secretly working for other departments and Palmer suspects she is spying on him – not for another country, but for his former boss Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman). This is not the sort of spy who will be going around shagging glamorous femme fatales. The fact that the opening scene has him waking up – alone – and going through his morning routine emphasises the ordinariness of the character. By this time, he’s unsure who he can trust, and sure enough, the story is awash with people who are not quite who or what they seem to be.Īs Palmer, Caine is suitably laconic – his NHS glasses effectively de-glamourising him and his domestic life (he lives alone in a flat and his first response to his new job is to ask if he gets any more money) is a far cry from the playboy lifestyle of Bond. But things soon start to unravel, as Palmer finds himself framed as a double agent and then captured by Bluejay, where he is subjected to brainwashing. The payoff and exchange seem to go off without a hitch – a dead American agent aside. That he manages to do this quickly while his colleagues, in the job much longer, singularly fail to find any leads says a lot about how desk-bound they are. In any case, they know it’s Eric Ashley Grantby (Frank Gatliff), codenamed Blujay, who has grabbed the scientist, and are prepared to pay to get him back, so all Palmer needs to do is find the kidnapper and make the offer. Palmer has a little desk in a cramped office and his boss Major Dalby (Nigel Green) is as concerned with paperwork as actual spying. In his first leading role, Michael Caine is Harry Palmer, an insolent army sergeant who finds himself seconded to a secret counter-intelligence unit, where he is tasked with securing the return of a kidnapped scientist. This is to spy thrillers what Goldfinger was to spy action movies. ![]() Furtive meetings in dark alleyways, double and triple crosses, checkpoints and coded messages were the meat and potatoes of these films, and it’s this latter category that The Ipcress File fits neatly into. Then, there were the rather more down to Earth, Cold War thrillers that were popular as novels (as indeed this story originally was, written by Len Deighton) and translated into movies that were more about espionage than action. On the one hand, you had Bond and his imitators, from Flint to Matt Helm and a slew of pan-continental, low budget Euro movies, all of which were in the never quite real ‘guns, gadgets and girls’ world of 007. There were, in fact, two distinct types of spy thrillers being made in the 1960s. Yes, this is a spy film, and yes, it’s produced by Harry Saltzman, who at the time was also one of the Bond producers, but that’s the only connection the films have. As glib descriptions go, it’s a pretty good one, though I’m not sure it especially helps the film – even when saying something is the opposite of something else, you’re still inevitably inviting a comparison. The Ipcress File has often been described as the ‘anti-Bond’ film of the Sixties, with its hero Harry Palmer of course the ‘anti- James Bond‘. Continuing our occasional series looking at the post-Bond spy movies that emerged in the 1960s with this classic ‘anti-Bond’ downbeat thriller that spawned its own franchise. ![]()
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