The Ipcress File stars Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, the anti-James Bond, is ordered to find a missing scientist and discover why so many are suddenly quitting their job. Will he end up like the last guy given that assignment? He has two masters to serve in order to stay out of jail. Will he be able to keep everyone satisfied or wind up in jail again? Unfortunately I was attracted to this movie for the wrong reasons: brainwashing scientists. I did not realize that I was choosing a spy thriller.
With a run time of one hour forty-seven minutes, the well-regarded classic adaptation of a popular novel with the same name loses something in its translation from the written word to the screen when it comes to investing in the mystery’s gravitas. I do not think that I will be reading this book. By the end, I reflected on the entire story after The Ipcress File and thought it ultimately did not work though the acting and directing could make viewers believe that they were getting more than they received and saved the film from becoming one of the first spoof comedies. The mystery is revealed in the final thirteen minutes, which felt rushed compared to the leisurely stroll of creating a substantial behind the scenes peek at what is purported to be the national security machine. It is not Bond until it is, and then it feels like a budget Bond. I kind of wish that it stuck to its lack of glamour by solving the mystery in an anti-climactic quotidian way.
The Ipcress File’s top spy is a vision impaired, working class bloke who never leaves London, discovers major leads from parking tickets and has a clash of wills while shopping in the supermarket aisles, which was probably my favorite part of the movie. The mystery is an afterthought. The film is really about getting us invested in Harry and learning about his world. It is predominantly a character study, which I was the opposite of why I got interested in this movie. Because we are supposed to relate to him, and he is unfamiliar with his world, as we see the bureaucratic, labyrinth cover world of local spies, who are more like glorified cops with tons of paperwork and regulations, we get distracted with trying to navigate this unfamiliar world filled with characters that you may otherwise overlook under a different set of circumstances like being the new kid in the office pool with slightly higher stakes. The movie is all about running the clock and distracting us.
If you like the distraction, then you won’t mind and come back for more because The Ipcress File is the first in a franchise and Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain quickly followed in annual succession. Even as a completist, I am reluctant to go down this road because apparently Caine revisited the character in the nineties with Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg. A brief search suggests that these movies are not easy to find and honestly I cannot tell you that the first was worth the trouble. Maybe it gets better, but I would not know.
The Ipcress File’s direction imbues the story with more gravitas than the actual work. I am unfamiliar with Sidney Furie’s work other than Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, which is customarily considered the worst of Christopher Reeve’s Superman films; however it holds a soft space in my heart. The composition of shots with people in relation to space heightens the sense of their smallness in the larger world. Furie uses the most by showing rather than telling us about characters. We learn a lot about people in the way that Furie depicts how they interact with their space whether it is one boss trying to coax pigeons to his window and ostensibly with his back to the door but always aware of what others are doing behind him or how another boss has space but is always facing the door and clinging to the corners of the room, far from the more comfortable warmth of the fire. Furie gives us the real story before we consciously are aware that he has. His camera angles are often askew to suggest that there is more to the normal world than meets the eye. When we finally get a fight, it is glimpsed from afar instead of head on. Commentators about the film point to it as a consistent vision to make the viewer feel as if they are surveilling the spies and integral to the story. Furie’s vision works in creating an atmosphere of tension, but also explicitly refusing us the expected catharsis and denying the expected rewards and narrative beats for our curiosity. Palmer is not the hero in the traditional or cinematic sense of the word. Furie does use sound in a traditional way to signal the real psychological horror of a scene: train whistles instead of screams and crashing shopping carts to express clashing wills and confrontation.
The Ipcress File’s real story is that World War II never really ended, it just came home. If people had dick measuring contests then, they are still competing just on a different front. Palmer is still an unwilling enlisted man. Palmer and other spies’ bodies are the battlefield upon which these power struggles are fought over. We are not seeing the Swinging Sixties, but the war years on a smaller scale and for lower stakes. It is not a battle of good versus evil, but ego, a salary and a pension. There is no grander meaning to comfort us over the lives lost. It is quite petty. The stakes are domination and power over others. This pitiful struggle sardonically punctures the popular image of spies working on the world stage over epic themes. While it is an excellent implicit moral commentary and criticism of blood thirsty viewers’ rationale for spectacle, it does quite work for as a viewing experience since the end throws it all away. Making then widely considered hottie Caine into the protagonist who does not follow the rules, gets the girl and generally gets the physical upper hand does not really accomplish it, especially since the denouement throws away all of Palmer’s point of view shots and the issue of his blurry vision is nothing but a distant, forgotten memory. For me, it is the unforgiveable sin of the movie that signals it is not about substance, but lack of funds to add more sizzle to this steak.
If The Ipcress File really wanted to pack a punch like The Manchurian Crisis by haunting us long after the credits rolled, Harry should have been a supporting character, and the leads should have been the real chess players while not revealing its hand about their real roles in the overall story. Then the twist would be more impactful. As it is, Albania becomes a watered down substitute for the USSR, and the international intrigue feels lame.
If you are a fan of Caine or a post-World War II Anglophile, The Ipcress File may be perfect for you, but it was a waste of my time. I could have watched better television.
