From the beginning, his novels of Cold War espionage and moral ambiguity attracted leading actors and filmmakers. Here are nine that can be streamed.
Few authors have had a better shake at the movies than John le Carré, whose sophisticated novels of Cold War atmosphere, moral ambiguities and wryly observed backroom machinations have long attracted talented filmmakers and leading actors. While Alec Guinness’s definitive performance as George Smiley in the BBC mini-series versions of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1979) and “Smiley’s People” (1982) are currently not available to stream in the U.S., there’s still a range of quality le Carré adaptations to sample over a half-century stretch. Some go inside the not-so-fashionable lives of British agents while others follow outsiders — a bureaucrat, a hotel manager, an actress — as they’re brought into new worlds of intrigue and danger. These seven films and two mini-series give the flavor of le Carré’s uniquely jaundiced take on the spy thriller genre. The first le Carré adaptation in any medium set the tone for the others that followed, establishing the spy game not as a life of glamour and adventure, but as a world blanketed by paranoia and suspicion, populated by world-weary men with inscrutable motives. Photographed in a perpetually gloomy black-and-white, the film casts Richard Burton as a British agent who works an elaborate ruse in the wake of an operative’s shooting death by East German troops. Showing outward appearances of displeasure with his station, including a fake demotion to desk duty in London, he makes himself the target of East German agents, who believe, falsely, they have a defector to turn. Stream it on Amazon Prime. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube. Based on le Carré’s first novel “Call for the Dead,” Sidney Lumet’s thriller doesn’t articulate the international intrigue of the author’s work as well as later adaptations, but it’s notable for how thoroughly it undercuts any fantastical notions of what it’s like to be a spy. Though rights issues kept the studio from using the name George Smiley, James Mason plays the same character as a dreary cuckold whose wife (Harriet Andersson) hates him and whose job satisfaction is hitting rock bottom. When a former Communist seems to commit suicide the day after their pleasant meeting in a park, he suspects foul play, turning his attention to the late man’s widow (Simone Signoret), who doesn’t appear to be telling him the truth. Quincy Jones did the lively score. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube. From the beginning, le Carré adaptations have always been an implicit rebuke to the James Bond series, which may have been part of their appeal to ex-Bonds like Sean Connery, who were given opportunities to summon gravitas that 007 didn’t require.
