Hacker Cinema
The Looking Glass War
1970 · Film · 108 min
Directed by Frank Pierson
When a Polish sailor jumps ship in Britain, a couple of local intelligence operatives keep him under surveillance. Soon, he’s recruited to infiltrate a missile installation outside of East Berlin and bring back photos of the new rockets.
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What I liked about "they spy who came in from the cold" was the pacing. Its small. "a small town in germany" is similary small, as is "the looking glass war" which has a nice quality that its really about inter-service rivalry more than the fieldman.
Peter Wright "spycatcher" made me think this stuff is more true than not. UCL (london) is next door to the kind of grey curtained (bomb-proof chain mail apparently) anonymous doors and blocks which we are told once housed outlier farms of the more elite services in the seventies. The big place down on the Thames up-ended all this, as did GCHQ's remake.
(Duncan Campbells writing on how the british state listened in pervasively to all telephone calls in the days of the microwave backbone up the spine of the UK is also worth reflecting on)
The atmosphere of the remake of 'tinker tailor' was really good. the grimy, flare-trouser, italian-design feels of the place was spot-on for time. I am less sure it was spot-on for what the secret services were like inside, but it felt like it should be: its what we want to believe. I've stayed in those grotty kings-cross hotels, they are alas, all too true.
I love all his books, but the later ones are frankly bloated. He's returned to small. His biography about his amoral father ("the perfect spy" is of course about the same family dynamic and probably has echoes of reality all through it) but you can't call autobiography novels, so thats out.
I thought "the russia house" was a better film adaptation than "the little drummer girl" and I thought "the night manager" was terribly adapted. All three are much the same as books I find.
"the constant gardener" is in some ways, the most depressing. I think it very probably speaks more truth than we would want.