NY Times on John le Carr'e Films
With Tomas Alfredson's TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY topping the British box office and due out in the United States this December, there's been renewed interest in the original novel and its writer John le Carré. In Sunday's New York Times, film critic Terrence Rafferty looks back the history of films adapted from le Carré's novels....
With Tomas Alfredson's TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY topping the British box office and due out in the United States this December, there's been renewed interest in the original novel and its writer John le Carré. In Sunday's New York Times, film critic Terrence Rafferty looks back the history of films adapted from le Carré's novels. The first one, Martin Ritt's 1965 THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, proved to be, just as the novel was, an unexpected hit. Rafferty comments:
Part of the book's appeal was its apparent realism about the sordid details of international espionage. Mr. le Carré's rumpled, depressed-looking spies didn't much resemble Ian Fleming's impossibly suave James Bond. (David Cornwell, before he became John le Carré, had worked in British intelligence, where he seems not to have encountered any 007s.)