Hacker Cinema
The Ipcress File
1965 · Film · 109 min
Part of Harry Palmer Collection
Directed by Sidney J. Furie
Sly and dry intelligence agent Harry Palmer is tasked with investigating British Intelligence security, and is soon enmeshed in a world of double-dealing, kidnap and murder when he finds a traitor operating at the heart of the secret service.
3 positive3 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
Something recently occured to me. The plot of the 1967 movie Billion Dollar Brain (the less-successful followup to the more famous 1965 The Ipcress File and 1966 Funeral in Berlin, all starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer), while I though the movie plot kind of stupid when I first saw it years ago, the plot is today actually completely plausible, and it is odd that no modern James Bond or Impossible Mission-style movie has done it.
Is this still how scripts are written? Feels like not being able to figure out an ending is something that was pretty common up until the 1970s, usually with the script of an otherwise great film just getting weird in the last 15 minutes as a result. I figured this was mostly a typewriter limitation, where editing was a lot more expensive.
For example, 2001's and its star child weirdness, The IPCRESS file, and many others.
Seems more often scripts are written with an ending in mind nowadays, with the weird bandaids ending up in the middle instead.
Maybe a bit OT in an article that's trying to be about AI but...
I think these movies are attempting to put you in the position of a spy, where you need to pay attention and infer motives from actions, and actions from motives.
The IPCRESS File is probably my favorite in the genre of cold war spy thrillers. It's slightly more on the fantastical side of the spectrum, but still so good it makes grocery shopping interesting.
The camera work is just brilliant, with many shots taken from angles that emulate covert surveillance, yet still managing to beautifully frame the scenes. Since this is implied, but never spoken, some reviewers seem to have missed this aspect, and just though they were shooting scenes through building windows for the sake of it.
Even just the opening scene says so much about the main character on without him or anyone else speaking a single word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCqP7R42K0
Another one to one side, is a hollerith card sorting machine in the original Michael Caine film of "The Ipcress File" -Len Deighton used to refer to tech in the books, and wound up being gifted one of the first word processing systems by a contact somewhere like IBM, to write on: industry noticed he liked the tech.
Nicholas Freeling did the same with CERN/DESY type places and the CAMAC crate in his book "Gadget" -he asked people what you call the kind(s) of tech they used, and they gave him something to use. Could have been "Unibus" and "pdp11"
There's a really good example of this in the 1965 film 'The Ipcress File' with Michael Caine (recommended).
Caine's character is portrayed as a gourmand, a bon viveur - he grinds his own coffee and uses a French press to brew it in - though I suspect that the director had never used one, as he doesn't actually let it brew.
In once scene he visits a a new-fangled supermarket with a colleague and picks up a can of tinned champignon from the shelves, remarking on how good they are. It always struck me how attitudes had changed. Today the character would be looking for the freshest mushrooms from the local farmers market.
An interesting exception is the film The IPCRESS File, the original with Michael Cain. It has extremely detailed cooking scenes, including the protagonist making his morning coffee in a french press as part of the opening montage. Good film, if a bit trippy at times.
> E.g. look at 1960’s London in the film ‘The Ipcress File’.
Look at that film in general. It's brilliant.
Some of the buildings look quite decrepit but if you look at photos of Britain or France or Germany from the 50’s you will see many similar buildings that need painted and cleaned.[0] People don’t look like they are dressed in rags. If anything I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos.
I didn’t think they illustrated what it felt like to have secret police looking over your shoulder. If you weren’t in trouble with the state or an upper class westerner I don’t think there was a huge difference in lifestyle between East and West Europe for most people until the late 60’s / early 70’s
Remember state housing was common in Britain as well. E.g 80% of the population of Glasgow lived in state owned housing until the 1980’s.
[O] E.g. look at 1960’s London in the film ‘The Ipcress File’.
Metropolis. Oh look.. she's c3po
There is a fantastic two second clip of a hollerith card sorter in 'the ipcress file' and 'the billion dollar brain' is a giant scam via a computer. (Both Len deighton spy thrillers)
The Italian job (then original) depends on a pre 1900 BPI tape reel. Another James Bond movie or three has similar tape subthemes (I think Roger Moore uses a Philips audio cassette as a tape in one)
It's a stretch but the taking of Pelham 123?
The andromeda strain (giant computer security system has to be defeated to avoid dying in a locked down biolab)
Len Deighton is in my view the best writer nobody has heard of. Well not nobody, several films have been made (with Michael Caine!!) but all of them were sort of crap and ended up feeling like poor man's James Bond. His work is widely perceived as cheap pulp, the sort of novels people pick up in airports and train stations.
Start with The Ipcress File. There are only a very few books that I read again and again for the sheer literary pleasure of their construction and expression, and I've read that book at least 10 times now, and hope to read it many more.
Deighton's novels have been popular but he has never been accorded the recognition given to other great writers in the espionage and war genres. Perhaps this is a result of too many irons in the fire - he's also a historian and graphic arts - but it has a good deal to do with his being a recluse and his relatively humble social origins, in my view, which perspective is fundamental to his writing. I cannot lavish enough praise upon him, but ask that if you enjoy his work you make an effort to share it with others.