Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950)

I am afraid you are going to have to take the evening off after all. Private detective Paul Temple (John Bentley) and his lovely wife Steve (Dinah Sheridan) are searching for the missing scientist Professor Hardwick (Andrew Leigh) behind a pioneering nuclear missile shield when their friend, his daughter Celia (Anne Hayes), appeals to them for help. When they find her dead at the family home they eventually find out it’s got something to do with a shadowy crime organisation known only by the initial Z. There are Teutonic boffins, petrol smugglers, snooping reporters and French singer Jacqueline Giraud (Jenny Mathot) armed with doped cigarettes distracting the Temples from cracking the case but time is running out and the bodies are piling up … Never should have sent it from Rangoon. The poor man’s British take on Nick and Nora Charles has a convoluted plot, so many bodies we couldn’t keep count and Sheridan dripping in full length furs. She also looks good with a gun. And great in trousers. She knows too much. It’s a rare film indeed that has a credit that reads, Cars by Aston-Martin and Lagonda. It’s an even rarer one whose turning point into the third act is The Radio Times! But, as the World Service broadcast Europe Today triggers catastrophic events that elicit little more than blithe cheeriness from our protagonists – even moments after finding the body of their good friend – this rattles on, damn it, whether we can keep up with developments or not. The late arrival of Peter Butterworth raises a smile in a story where virtually nobody is who they say they are and the villains really are ruthless people. The third in the popular series this B-movie entry was adapted by A. R. Rawlinson from the Francis Durbridge novel which was also a radio serial, News of Paul Temple , this works like a low rent James Bond episode with pertinent post-war references including rationing. Celebrity spotters might recognise Hayes (whose only feature credit this was) as the first wife of Peter Sellers. Produced by Ernest G. Roy and directed by Maclean Rogers at Nettlefold Studios with location shooting at Hillingdon, Northolt Airport, Walton-on-Thames, Beaulieu, Shepperton and East Horsley. What have you got in here – cast iron camisoles?

Argylle (2024)

You need to stay on target. Introverted spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) has almost finished writing her fifth book about Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill), the title character of the Argylle spy series. On a train journey with her cat Alfie (Chip) to go and visit her mother Ruth (Catherine O’Hara) home in Chicago, Elly is saved from an ambush by an actual spy, Aidan Wylde (Sam Rockwell) who explains to her that a devious organisation, known as the Division, headed by Ritter (Bryan Cranston) has targeted her because her novels seemingly predict their future. Aidan travels with Elly to England, hoping that her next chapter will reveal how to stop the Division. In London, the duo searches for a Masterkey that would help expose the Division that Elly had also referenced in her novels. Suspecting Aidan wants to kill her too, Elly calls her mother for help and she immediately travels to rescue her daughter. There’s a knock at the door and it’s Elly’s father (Bryan Cranston). Then Aidan arrives and reveals that her parents are both operatives of the Division, forcing him and Elly to fend them off before fleeing. Who’s the only person who hasn’t tried to kill you in the past seventy-two hours? Escaping to France, Aidan and former CIA deputy director Alfie Solomon reveal that Argylle is not entirely fictional: Elly is in fact agent Rachel Kylle (‘Argylle’ having been derived from ‘R. Kylle’), who was captured and brainwashed by the Division five years ago and made to believe that Dr. Margaret Vogeler (Ruth) and Director Ritter (Barry) were her real parents. Elly put her suppressed memories into her novels in modified form … We’re on our own now. Cats. Writers. Spies. A recipe for success! Starwise it’s essentially Bryce versus Bryan – with a lot of Sam and Henry to spice things up. Even John Cena and pop star Dua Lipa show up in the great opening sequence and later Samuel L. Jackson and Ariana DeBose enter the fray. There’s an argument to be made for a director with such clear gifts as Matthew Vaughn that he should be making serious films – that is, narratives with more significant content and in reality it would appear he is painting himself into a corner of ridiculousness if not necessarily one of large scale likeable silliness. But we might mention that here he’s making a film about the inside of a woman’s mind (and even her eyelids) – kudos for that. Spies lie. It’s part of the game. As the perennially youthful Rockwell morphs into the amusingly Action Man-like Cavill we understand how a writer thinks, the rules of the espionage genre and enjoy Vaughn’s permanently witty point of view as Ellie figures out how to do adventure and spying in the real world (again). You’re just a character I made up. As usual in a Vaughn production, everything looks beautiful courtesy of DoP George Richmond and production designers Russell De Rozario and Daniel Taylor, the action is well managed and there are even some meta references (Argylle is definitely suited and booted by Kingsman). There’s an impressive score by Lorne Balfe with an astute use of the Beatles’ final song to lend poignancy. The midpoint reveal is great fun. Thereafter the conventions necessarily come into play. The greater the spy – the bigger the lie. There’s an easy bond (James?!) between our principals: You’re one hell of a spy, Ellie. Not a bad writer, either. And it’s a jolly sight indeed to have Howard spend most of the film carting her cat Alfie around in a posh backpack – and you know what they say about cats in dramatic structure (Save the Cat?!) – if there’s one in the first act, it has to go off in the third! It makes us think Vaughn is precisely the director to reinvigorate that moribund franchise albeit this is the first in a series of its own to perhaps be fused with Kingsman at a later date. Bonkers, nutty and fun, to be honest, this had us at Cat. Just tell us what happens in the next chapter

John le Carre 19th October 1931 – 12th December 2020

The death has taken place of David Cornwell, otherwise known as John le Carre, the man who was in the British security service and then took to writing novels that enlightened the world about the Cold War and the machinations of spying. One of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century, he was a superb communicator about the conditions of the world. His work has inspired film and television adaptations and frequently shone a light on the murky side of realpolitik and state-sponsored surveillance and violence. His most celebrated character, George Smiley, has been incarnated and reincarnated for big and small screen alike, a prism into the changing political landscape and the puppet masters behind it. We are the wiser for having been able to partake of his knowledge, his conscience and his elegant writing. Rest in peace.

Carve Her Name With Pride (1958)

If I’d been a man I’d like to have been a professional soldier. Young English war-widow and mother to Tania, a toddler daughter, Violette Szabo (Virginia McKenna) is recruited to become a secret agent in occupied France during World War II following the death in North Africa of her French soldier husband Etienne Szabo (Alain Saury). Teamed with Captain Tony Fraser (Paul Scofield) whom she has encountered socially, she is sent on her first mission to Rouen and does so well she even has time to go shopping in Paris. The second mission to Limoges is much more dangerous and she gets caught when her dodgy ankle gives up but not before she kills a dozen Nazis, allowing French Resistance fighter Jacques (Maurice Ronet) to escape and warn the rest of the cell. Exposed to torture at Avenue Foch by the Gestapo and the degradation of Ravensbruck concentration camp in the company of fellow trainees Denise (Nicole Stephane) and Lilian (Anne Leon) Violette finds herself facing a continual struggle for survival… I think you have certain qualifications that might be of great use. This adaptation by Vernon Harris and director Lewis Gilbert of R. J. Minney’s biography is a British war classic: the true story of a brave young Englishwoman who was selected to serve her country by dint of her ability to speak French, her athleticism and recent widowhood. It’s lightly told in monochrome against the backdrop of grey wartime London, with funny montages illustrating the progression of the relationship with Etienne – Violette is always accompanied by best friend Winnie (Billie Whitelaw) tagging along on their dates; while the antics at training camp are amusingly done and the action scenes are solid. The ending and coda are all the more tragic for their understatement. A story of greatness, very well told and McKenna was rightly recognised for her achievement in the complex role. Lewis Gilbert’s brother-in-law Sydney Tafler plays Potter, the ‘Ministry of Pensions’ official who hired Szabo. Look quickly for Michael Caine as one of the thirsty prisoners on the train. Real-life heroine ‘Odette’ was one of the film’s technical advisers and the poem that’s the source of Violette’s code was written by real-life SOE coder Leo Marks who would later become a playwright and screenwriter, perhaps best known for the film that killed Michael Powell’s brilliant British career (at least in the eyes of the so-called critics), Peeping Tom. They are not going to catch me

Little Nikita (1988)

I was crossing into the west before you could spell bolshevik. Jeffrey Nicolas Grant (River Phoenix) is a cocky hyperactive teen living in a suburb of San Diego with his parents Richard (Richard Jenkins) and Elisabeth (Caroline Kava) who run a garden centre. Ambitious and keen to fly, Jeff has applied for entry to the Air Force Academy. During a routine background check on Jeff, FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Sidney Poitier) finds contradictory information on his parents, who have adopted identities of people dead a hundred years, making him suspect that all is not as it should be especially given the present whereabouts of a Soviet agent Konstantin Karpov (Richard Bradford) on the trail of a rogue agent Scuba (Richard Lynch) apparently killing off all the Soviet sleepers in the US. Further investigations reveal that the Grants may be sleeper agents too. Unable to arrest them as they have not done anything illegal, Roy continues his investigation, moves into the house across the street from the Grant family, and worms his way into Jeff’s confidence, eventually confronting Jeff with his suspicions and seeking his cooperation to learn more about his parents. Jeff is soon forced to accept the facts and discovers that his real name is Nikita. Meanwhile Karpov is moving closer to home and Scuba is heading straight for the Grants … Straight As. Tells his friends he gets Cs. A coming of age tale with a difference. Written by Bo Goldman and John Hill the intriguing premise is let down somewhat by the uneven directing from actor Richard Benjamin and the conclusion. Phoenix impresses as the brash teen who isn’t remotely what he thinks he is while Jenkins and Kava perfectly capture the fear implied by the big reveal. It all ends predictably enough with respect between Poitier and Bradford winning out over the presumed quarry. For Phoenix fans this is of course the perfect companion piece to the comparable but superior Running On Empty, released 6 months later, another story about a teenager on the cusp of adulthood whose parents’ politics are dangerously problematic. Shot by the legendary Laszlo Kovacs with an occasionally discordant score from Marvin Hamlisch, there’s a fabulous sequence of the Sleeping Beauty ballet choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan. You’re not my father. You’re not even my friend

Passport to China (1960)

Aka Visit to Canton. The city lives on whispers – all of spies. Former US pilot Don Benton (Richard Basehart) is running a profitable tour company out of Hong Kong when he is persuaded to perform a dangerous undercover mission following a plane crash in Formosa involving his good friend Jimmy (Burt Kwouk). He travels to Canton to rescue lovely American Lola Sanchez (Lila Gastoni) but following some dealings with casino operator Ivano Kong (Eric Pohlmann) she asks him to transport refugees out of Red China … I’ve never been so scared in my life. Suave Basehart puts his genial persona to good work in this unusual entry from Hammer – because it’s so conventional even as Cold War thrillers go. The screenplay by Gordon Wellesley has some nice quips and action and it’s quite a surprise to see Athene Seyler playing Mao Tai Tai, grandmother to Kwouk, not to mention Bernard Cribbins as a junior wheeler dealer type.  The sophomore outing from director Michael Carreras, such a huge figure at the studio, has some exotic backdrops to enhance a studio-bound production. A wise man never arrives too early – or too late

Tenet (2020)

We live in a twilight world. An unnamed CIA agent (John David Washington) gets kidnapped and tortured by gangsters following an opera siege in Ukraine and wakes up after he takes a fake suicide pill, is rebuilt and sent on a new mission – to find out who’s shipping inverted bullets from the future using Priya (Dimple Kapadia) as a front. He discovers through a forged Goya it’s Russian arms dealer Andrey Sator (Kenneth Branagh) whose art expert wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) is more or less his hostage, trying to keep in contact with their young son. Working with British agent Neil (Robert Pattinson) he organises an attack on the (tax- free) Freeport in Oslo Airport where art treasures are being held in an attempt to to root out the channels Sator is using and tries to avert the end of the world as Sator’s suicide mission takes hold … With a hi-vis jacket and a clipboard you can get in practically anywhere in the world. The ongoing paradox – one of many – in the latest offering from writer/director Christopher Nolan – is that in a world of special effects he does his filmmaking in camera and this has an admirably real feeling, with a lot of it shot in gloomy European cities that mostly look alike – grey, with brutalist tower blocks and dull skies. It’s the dystopic vision that J.G. Ballard satirised while predicting the future, a time when Alain Resnais was pioneering storytelling backwards and forwards through time yet the Sixties feeling is very now. The palindromic inventiveness lies in the story structure, the characterisation and the trust in the audience. Of course it helps  that this tale of a man with the power of apocalypse in his nasty Eastern European paws and the foreknowledge informing his every move is released to a Covid-19 world where people wear masks and dread the end of days, rather like here (when they’re not masked they’re bearded, which is pretty much the same thing). That it also takes the long tall Sally from TV’s espionage hit adaptation of John le Carre’s The Night Manager and puts her in a markedly similar role doesn’t go amiss. These realistic meta touches – with Branagh’s horrifying oligarch resident in London – grip the narrative to something close to recognisable quotidian newspaper headlines; while the parallel lines of future-past intersect in the ‘inverted’ nodes that splatter in all directions. It may be that after one hundred minutes when they decide to return to Oslo and they mean go back in time to Oslo that the plot becomes not just far fetched but out of reach to the ordinary pea brain, or someone who thinks in too linear a fashion, as soldier Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) chides The Protagonist. As ever, we must remember that future and past selves best not meet each other or else – annihilation. There are boys’ own fantasies writ large – joyriding an aeroplane and causing a horrifying amount of damage, an exhilarating catamaran race, an astonishing quasi-hijacking which can’t possibly go well with all that time travel inversion stuff, great military hardware for the penultimate sequence and the unpeeling of The Protagonist aka The American who starts out from a very bad place indeed and is literally reconstituted to do his worst.  The entire narrative is based on one diadic exchange:  What just happened here?/ It didn’t happen yet! It’s a different experience than Inception which was all about a built world inhabited by a featureless character – a video game, in any language. Yet we can see all the references from the Airport movies, through Terry Gilliam and The Thomas Crown Affair in this timeblender. Branagh is such an evil bad guy you expect him to tell Washington he expects him to die while twirling his comedy moustache. And Pattinson might well be reprising his T.E. Lawrence in those early sweaty linen suits. How you appear is all, as Michael Caine’s Sir Michael Crosby informs Washington – less Brooks Brothers, more Savile Row tailoring. They are men on a mission but not Men in Black. This all concludes in the abject maternal being resolved in pleasing fashion, a not unfamiliar trope in Nolan’s body of work; the opportunity to rewrite your life is presented here in key moments. There is one huge technical problem with the film that damages the plot clarity and that is the woeful sound mix, leaving much dialogue lost in the guttural music of Ludwig Goransson while revelling in the sheer kinetic drive of the action. It’s not too late in this digital age to whip up some new codes to tidy it up, is it? Maybe just ratchet up the EQs a tad. In the interim, relish the historical possibilities of film editing in this awesome mosaic of affect and attractions and heed the advice given in soothing voice early on, Don’t try to understand it – feel it. Welcome back, Cinema.

The Russia House (1990)

You live in a free society; you have no choice. Publisher Bartholomew ‘Barley’ Scott Blair (Sean Connery) is caught in a conspiracy when he receives manuscripts from a Russian scientist, Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer) claiming that the Russian nuclear programme is a sham. Ned (James Fox) from British intelligence and Russell (Roy Scheider) and Brady (John Mahoney) of the CIA have the book intercepted en route to Blair at his Lisbon home because they consider it to contain crucial information.  They recruit him to investigate its editor, Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer) a divorced mother of two. As Blair goes to Moscow and learns the origin of the manuscript and discovers Russian military secrets, he falls in love with Katya and fights to protect her family even as he realises that Katya may have another admirer. The two intelligence agencies have a shopping list of questions to check that Dante is for real but Ned begins to wonder where Barley’s loyalties really lie … How the fuck do you peddle an arms race when the only asshole you’ve got to race against is yourself? Adapted from John le Carre’s novel by Tom Stoppard, this elegant look at Russian-British relations at the tail end of the Glasnost Eighties may have been overtaken by real events but it’s nonetheless a wittily constructed espionage story with one of Connery’s best performances as the sax playing book publisher whose heart is stolen by Pfeiffer, an atypically stunning editor with Pfeiffer turning in a really nuanced performance as the semi-tragic Russian. Only the second major American film to be shot in the Soviet Union, it’s picturesque indeed, using so many beautiful settings in Leningrad and Moscow and enhanced by the fantastic cast among whom film director Ken Russell makes a splash as Walter, the Brit spy, in his inimitable fashion; while the tension between the British and American agencies supplies much of the suspense. A superior entertainment directed by Fred Schepisi. If there is to be a hope we must all betray our country, we have to save each other because all victims are equal and none is more equal than others. It’s everyone’s duty to start the avalanche

The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960)

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This hulk is commissioned?  As what?! In 1943 at the height of World War 2 Lieutenant Rip Crandall (Jack Lemmon) is conned into taking charge of a broken-down ship with a clueless crew whom he has to train up to learn the most basic elements of seagoing. The only member who knows how to work a ship with sails is eager young Ensign Tommy Hanson (Ricky Nelson) who cost Crandall a yacht race with a mistake before the war. Hanson and Crandall’s former sailing buddy Lieutenant Commander Vandewater (John Lund) wear down his resistance. Then he finds out they have a top secret mission and he has to sneak an Australian spy/coast watcher Patterson (Chips Rafferty) into enemy waters of the Pacific patrolled by the Japanese … This was a period of far-reaching decisions, desperate strategies, and incredibly daring counter-strokes – not the least of which involved two bright young naval officers. A colourful widescreen action adventure that achieves the transition from docks-bound comedy to island warfare so smoothly you won’t even notice. Lemmon is superb as the supposed schmuck who rises to the challenge of educating a bunch of crafty oddballs. Lund more or less reprises his role from A Foreign Affair 15 years earlier as the slick willy officer conniving with Nelson, who has one of his best roles here and even gets to sing while Lemmon jams on a piano. Rafferty adds serious flavour in the final scene sequence when they have to deal with some pesky Japanese soldiers, one of whom speaks English and finds common ground (then water) with Lemmon. Herb Margolis & William Raynor’s screen story was based on a story by Herbert Carlson about the real USS Echo which was requisitioned from New Zealand and the screenplay was by director Richard Murphy. A terrific comedy drama. What, aren’t you going to stay here and die for the ‘Rising Sun’?

Sabotage (1936)

Aka A Woman Alone/I Married a Murderer. You don’t need second sight in a case like this. A ring of foreign saboteurs is causing havoc in London with a series of explosive terrorist attacks. Karl Verloc (Oscar Homolka) is part of the group, but he maintains a cover as a cinema proprietor. His wife (Sylvia Sidney) is beginning to suspect something, though, and so is Scotland Yard undercover Detective Sgt. Ted Spencer (John Loder) who has been assigned to work at the shop next door to the cinema. What neither of them knows is that Verloc uses his wife’s little brother Stevie (Desmond Tester) to deliver the bombs in film canisters… You made London laugh. When one sets out to put the fear of death into people, it’s not helpful to make them laugh. We’re not comedians. Hitchcock always regretted having something major happen in this production – something he never permitted again because he felt it was a mistake, breaking the rules of suspense he was so careful to engineer the scaffolding of his narratives. Nonetheless this impressively constructed story of terror on the streets of London between the wars is hugely atmospheric with excellent effects, a great chase and a startling conclusion. Adapted (loosely) from Joseph Conrad’s 1907 novel The Secret Agent (confusingly the title of another Hitchcock film the same year) this is updated by Charles Bennett and action takes place at Piccadilly Circus, Simpsons’ restaurant and other familiar locales including the cinema that is Verloc’s base which allows some meta comments about the viewing experience with the film within a film being Disney’s Who Killed Cock Robin? (one of the Silly Symphonies). The acting wasn’t all to Hitchcock’s taste however and he altered dialogue on set when he was forced to hire Loder instead of an ailing Robert Donat and the film probably suffers a little as a result but this is a tense, serious and exciting work. Shot by Bernard Knowles and edited by Charles Frend. Made at Gainsborough Studios and around London. They’re the people that you and I will never catch. It’s the men they employ that we’re after