“Spione” (1928)
Fritz Lang followed up his sci-fi epic “Metropolis” with this lesser-known silent yarn of surveillance, one that has as much right to be hailed a classic as its predecessor. A disgraced Secret Service agency must find a way to stop Russian spymaster, Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), and his attempts at acquiring national secrets. They employ Agent 326 (Willy Fritch) for the job, and Haghi employs his own secret agent, Sonja (Gerda Maurus), to get closer to 326. But the two get a little too close for Haghi’s liking, and the intricate narrative continues to unravel layer upon layer of compelling intrigue; replete with backstabs, disguises, threats, and lots of chain-smoking. Fritz Lang mastered the crime genre with “M” and his ‘Dr. Mabuse’ series (the criminal mastermind played by the very same, implacable Klein-Rogge), but the fusion of pulpy noir and German expressionism that comes to an exhilarating collision in “Spies” stands right alongside the master’s more recognized works. Exceptional set pieces, staggering art design, and immaculate pacing are buoyed by a way-ahead-of-its-time narrative that continues to put many a modern spy flick to shame.
“The Spy In Black” (1939)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are perhaps the greatest filmmaking team of the 20th century, and their very first outing stands as good-as-any evidence. “The Spy In Black” harks back to a pre-Cold War world of espionage, when Naval warfare held the key to strategic dominance, and U-boats were the most feared weapon of choice. As such, the picture is imbued with a nostalgic, almost romanticized, air — all the more accentuated by Conrad Veidt‘s remarkable performance as the magnetic German commander Hardt, sent to infiltrate Britain and devise a military attack on her fleet. He meets up with (and falls for) undercover liaison Frau Tiel (Valerie Hobson), and an apparent British defector, Royal Navy officer Ashington (Sebastian Shaw), but nothing is what it seems, naturally. The symphonic direction uncovers a bygone era of espionage in balletic strides (Tiel and Hardt’s first meeting is a thing of shadowy beauty), while the quick-witted screenplay (“Oh, you must be a prisoner of war then?” “No, [points gun] You are.”) is stupendously engaging. Easily one of the greatest films of its kind.
“The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” (1965)
A top-notch adaptation of one of John Le Carré‘s greatest spy novels (indeed, voted greatest ever by Publishers Weekly in 2006) is bolstered even further towards immortal greatness by one of Richard Burton‘s most intoxicatingly disgruntled performances. “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold” is directed by “Hud” honcho Martin Ritt with the control and deliberately engineered pace of someone who genuinely understood Le Carré’s sophisticated grasp of the spy genre, exquisitely shot in crisp black-and-white by Oswald Morris. In many ways, it’s the ultimate espionage picture; for almost every scenario Burton’s Alec Leamas finds himself in — whether he’s flirting with Claire Bloom‘s gullible Nan Perry, acting a drunken ass in a convenience store, or getting scrutinized by Fiedler (an excellent Oskar Werner) — is enveloped in an atmosphere of double-handed surveillance. All to ultimately dispel the false romantic myth of spies propagated by James Bond, and to reveal their true natures as “a bunch of seedy squalid bastards” in the film’s classic closing moments. Fans of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” would do well to note that George Smiley does make an appearance here (played by Rupert Davies), and he’s kind of a dick.
“Three Days Of The Condor” (1975)
The 70s were a booming time for conspiracy thrillers thanks to the Watergate scandal, and pictures like “The Parallax View” and “The Conversation” were fashionably toying with people’s heightened sense of everyday paranoia. So Sidney Pollack took this opportunity, and swooped in with A-listers Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, and Swedish legend Max Von Sydow, to turn “Three Days Of The Condor” into one of the most entertaining espionage actioners of its time. Redford plays bookish CIA pencil pusher Joe Turner (codename: “Condor”), who comes back from lunch one day to find his team members murdered. With the help of random civilian Kathy (Dunaway), Turner begins to uncover a deep conspiracy within the CIA while simultaneously fleeing from the cold-hearted assassins who murdered his colleagues (led with distinguished malice by Von Sydow’s mustachioed Joubert). At once an ode to the frenetic urban environment of New York City, and a thrillingly intense Rubik’s Cube of counter-intelligence, “Three Days Of The Condor” still remains one of the better examples of the price the everyman pays when he’s forced into the role of spy.
“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011)
With one of John Le Carré’s most popular best-selling novels (the first of his “Karla” trilogy) cementing the groundwork, and a dream ensemble cast that includes practically every British actor of high intelligence available at the time (deep breath: Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, *collapses*), the only question left with the screen adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” was whether Swedish director Tomas Alfredson had the mettle for the task. The answer is a resounding HELL YES. The plot is alarmingly simple as far as spy matters go: it’s the height of the Cold War, there’s a Soviet mole in the Circus, and it’s up to George Smiley (Oldman) to find out who it is before crucial information is leaked. Simple, yet so incredibly intricate in the way it unravels that one almost feels like watching the film in slow motion just so every second can be savored, not unlike sipping vintage port. Every cinematic element — from Alberto Iglesias‘ soft score and Hoyte Van Hoytema‘s lush cinematography, to Oldman’s microcosmic subtleties, and beyond — converges to create what is perhaps the greatest of all John Le Carré’s adaptations, both in spirit and matter, only rivalled by the BBC miniseries adaptation of the same book.
A genre that sprawls this much and that spans almost the entire reaches of film history has literally hundreds more titles we could have included, many of which we really wanted to. The terrific “Zero Dark Thirty” feels more “manhunt” than “spy movie” necessarily, while “Day of the Jackal” is less about a spy than a terrorist assassin, while Coppola’s immaculate “The Conversation” is about a man who surveils for a living, as opposed to a government agent. Others we’d have liked to have made room for: the silly fun of “True Lies“; the knotty brilliance of “Black Book“; based-in-truth yarns “Argo” and “Charlie Wilson’s War“; classics “The Odessa File” and “Falcon and the Snowman“; more sober fare like “Breach” and “The Good Shepherd“; and comedies/spoofs like “Austin Powers,” “Spies Like Us,” “OSS 117” among many, many others. Some of those additional titles we’ll have thought of and excluded for whatever reason, but others we’ve probably forgotten about, and need castigating for overlooking in the comments section. What picks should we be machine gunned in the back on our way to the West for leaving out, and which should we be tossed into the piranha pool for including? Tell us below.
— Jessica Kiang, Nikola Grozdanovich, Oli Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez, Nicholas Laskin