Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (novel, miniseries, and forthcoming film to be directed by Tomas Alfredson)

bennings = lacon

really struggling with toby!

seven eps (ie a lot less than a full season) and self-contained story never intended to generate further episodes = mini-series by US usage

Think Hywel Bennett is underrated in the original. Can't think of another actor who's gone from youthful adonis to aged ogre quite so spectacularly.

i am happy (just starting chapter three) to defend the position that the TV version is a lot better than the book

not a hard position to defend!

the other adonis-ogre:

http://i2.listal.com/image/499583/600full-david-hemmings.jpg http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39597000/jpg/_39597403_davidhemmings_pa_story203.jpg

i just read "night soldiers" by alan furst on the recommendation of a friend and boyyy did it make me appreciate JLC a lot more, despite having gotten pretty annoyed with him a couple months ago after tearing through his best few books and finding that the rest weren't nearly as good

http://www.terrynorm.ic24.net/photo%20hywel%20bennett%20young.jpg http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsB/tve1340-19960912-1345.gif http://www.horrorphile.net/images/the-thing-blairthing1.jpg

nothing i read after smiley's people was any good, though i see SP is less than halfway through his bibliog so far

halfway thru the tarr inquisition which is terrific -- except maybe the stuff that irina's is sposed to have written on toilet paper, which is a bit [insert plot-point here] [using lady] [consults manual of lady-fashioning]

yeah smiley's people is sort of the cutoff point for me too, though a perfect spy and tailor of panama have redeeming qualities/bits, and i havent read anything hes done in the last ten years. little drummer girl is the one that turned me off le carre. still dont know anyone whose written as many well-written/highly readable spy novels this side of graham greene

eric ambler and len deighton are both great when they're on

Can't think of another actor who's gone from youthful adonis to aged ogre quite so spectacularly.

Needs own thread?

went on a hunt to discover when exactly the story is set -- irina says the "ultra-reactionaries" are back in power in westminster (= ted heath presumably!) and smiley notes that the war is 30 years ago: TTSS was publiushed in 74, so that makes it 1970-73 i guess

anyway what i found instead was suggestions who characters were likely based on, which i'd never pursued before (caveat: i think jlc was always stayed coy, which is fair enough)

connie = milicent bagot <-- oddly sad about this, it diminshes connie not to be made up, somehow
smiley = maurice oldfield <-- unconvinced by this claim, think smiley is organically a fictional evolution
haydon = kim philby <-- this is interesting, and maybe more plausible, but it does strange things to the time line, basically extending/shunting a mid-50s story into the early 70s

but actually one of the strengths of the novel is the sense of stuff spilling from an earlier era into a later time: of half the characters as weird left-overs in an era they totally don't understand (jlc is always a bit hopeless actually depicting the modern world, less so at depicting the flailing melancholy of the middle-age not knowing how to negotiate it

http://girlspy.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/millicent-bagot.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7BLh-1UU7pU/Tl4Aid-9zyI/AAAAAAAATu0/ZT8_QRsxTro/s400/oldfield2.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jWsPQF94rz8/TZUVz5hbWJI/AAAAAAAADfo/B1rnWF95VXg/s1600/KimPhilby.jpg

are there any decent non-fic histories of post-war mi6? I'm always a bit suspicious – the 900pp one that came out last year looked a bit dull (& long). I want traitors + mind games + speculation + sociopathic lunatics messing shit up in bucharest

Said 900pp one just got turned back into the library here so I'm going to give it a read. Though presumably it will be fairly dull.

you gotta choose between books by spooks and books by conspiracy nuts for the most part i guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUj3uxm_F20

haydon's christ church gang of aesthetes hammers home the philby-haydon connection iirc

though a perfect spy and tailor of panama have redeeming qualities/bits

saw on the jacket of APS that philip roth says it is 'the best english novel since the war'. i haven't read it but still felt, steady on phil.

he must've missed that Tony Parsons joint

i've never seen the film version of Spy Who Came in From the Cold - any good? has richard burton EVER been in a good movie?

Plenty of praise for said film upthread.

ty, it seems like the kind of film that is given away free w the daily mail on a regular basis so i will scour the charity shops for a copy

dude... where eagles dare.

i've never seen the film version of Spy Who Came in From the Cold - any good? has richard burton EVER been in a good movie?

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 9:45 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

a) yeah it's great b) what tammy said

oh yeah duh forgot where eagles dare, even ingrid pitt is gd in that

i seem to remember reading a v sniffy piece in private eye abt that big, recent 900 page secret service history that woof and ned mention - sounded p compromised/'official', from what i recall. in the 80s (and earlier) you'd often see bestsellery bks abt MI5etc by ppl w wonderful names like Chapman Pincher and Fenton Bresler, wonder who (if anybody) are their equivs today (haven't really 'kept up' w/ the genre)

a v sniffy piece in private eye

surely not

i remember my dad bringing a copy of this back from his travels, seemed awfully exciting

nb i have never read it

copies of spycatcher actually add up to greater biomass than human beings at this point

a perfect spy is not the best english novel since the war

that would be the satan bug

Julie Burchill's Ambition imo

i think you're all forgetting a little something called The Rats

i dunno i think Lair is probly stronger also i was only half kidding about Julie B

Le Carre movie adaptations are a good thread.

I like in descending order:

The Russia House
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Tailor of Panama
Little Drummer Girl

never seen russia house; have no will ever to see drummer girl

gave tailor of panama a bad review in S&S -- i loved the tailoring (marking up and cutting) in the opening shots, which i assume was not being done by geoffrey rush's hands: it's now the only thing i can remember

spy who came in is good though: kitchen sink, really, except not set in the north obv

i read "the perfect spy" but remember nothing WHATEVER about it

and to continue my liveblog of TTSS:

after the school opening and the martindale exposition, the three successive actual-real thriller sections are pretty flawless: the tarr debrief, guillam cases the circus, and smiley visits connie -- there's a lot of storytelling going on in the first and the last, the only time this falters, as noted, is when tarr's reading irina's journal, he tells his own story well but jlc can't find a plausible written voice for her; and the connie section is probably one of the best things her ever wrote (maybe why he tried to top it in smiley's people); guillam in the circus is actually really a way to introduce the opposition as real people, the mcguffin to get him there is negligeable, and meant to be

i'm halfway through smiley's research-and-memory binge now, less successful i'd say, though it pulled one stunt of "reading so deep you forget where you are and being reminded of your surroundings with a start", where smiley does this and jlc causes you to as well, that was neat -- the setting, the crappy little hotel near paddington, is two notches too cartoonish and mimsy

haha i am actually sick of the ann counter-plot already

"there's a lot of storytelling going on" -- haha yes very insightful, i mean a lot of characters recounting stories (mainly tarr and connie obv)

I haven't read the Le Carre novel on which it's based but except for its stupid ending (which I can't even remember), The Tailor of Panama is good nasty fun.

i'd look up my review but that room has no working lightbulbs at the moment

think i tried to watch that as 'a john boorman film' which was probably the wrong way in

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rEEjjIEeZFA/SMXo2VuSf_I/AAAAAAAAACk/0maUZiPz1po/s400/zardoz+head.jpg

"the gun is good, the penis is evil"

haha i like some of boorman's films a lot, but that^^^ will always come to mind first

ugh

has richard burton EVER been in a good movie?

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, September 7, 2011 9:45 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L-9YmI0V1c

it was only when i listened to the boorman commentary track on the Zardoz DVD that i found out where the title comes from - (wi)zard(of)oz!

wha? im p sure it's in the movie. he goes to a library and sees the book

great movie imo

"there's a lot of storytelling going on" -- haha yes very insightful, i mean a lot of characters recounting stories (mainly tarr and connie obv)

― mark s, Thursday, September 8, 2011 12:48 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah. i think 'small town in germany' is the most 'and then he met x who told him y'. but this has a bit of it.

anyway, i think the novel makes it a lot more abt prideaux, not just by starting with him, but by making his debrief to smiley sorta the climax. big build-up, and it goes on for a minute. by reordering the sequence -- we know what happened to prideaux from the jump -- the novel makes it less about prideaux's personal betrayal by gerald. going to watch series again though.

i like ASTIG though. kinda like a david peace who doesn't suck.

haha will have to rescreen zardoz, maybe i was distracted by connery's codpiece

can't really get behind equus as a good movie, btw - ts: anthony shaffer vs peter shaffer

it is a treat to have mark s liveblogging TTSS, also

Reading some of the stuff about TTSS, and the nods that Smiley - though loyal, and diligent – is suffused with a sense of distaste and guilt about the whole game reminded me about The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, where - as an incidental character - he is responsible (albeit perhaps inadvertently) for the betrayal and eventual death of Nan. In TSWCIFTC he's still very much part of the machine – though it's never referred in the Smiley trilogy, maybe his role in Nan's death haunts him.

Equus is an unnecessary filming of a middling play, true. Zulu is good, obv, as is Virginia Woolf and Villain and probly Absolution if you're in the mood.

Prideaux is Le Carre's good chap to contrast to all the shifty bounders - maybe including Smiley - in the rest of the novel. I suspect Le Carre thinks he's the hero in some ways, but at least he comes across as kinda decent, unlike Westerby in The Honourable Schoolboy who occupies the same role but is mostly a fucking dick imo.

the one time i tried to watch Villain it was interrupted by the start of the first gulf war!

i've been wrong so often on this thread i hesitate to ask but - burton is zulu??

i also forgot abt the medusa touch, which has some of the some atmos as the tv version of TTSS, funnily enough - britain on the cusp of thatcherism, resigned middle aged men in suits, london as a place of emptiness (morally, geographically)