Triumphing Over Danger and Winning in the End

March 14, 2020 – The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965) Amazon Prime

I find my self wanting to watch and read detective stories these days. I just read and loved Harlen Coben’s new book The Boy From the Woods and Lee Child’s old book One Shot, and I watched the Netflix show The Stranger based on a different Harlen Coben book. It is easy to see why detective stories are so comforting in this dangerous time. The detective is a figure who holds onto his moral certainty while triumphing over danger. Sam Spade starts off unsure who killed his partner, but he is always able to disarm the gunsel and uncover the truth, all the while holding fast to his determination that “I won’t play the sap for you.” Jack Reacher beats the odds again and again, defeating a half dozen or so armed Russian gangsters with only a knife and taking out the “puppet master” because “ he had a girl killed…so he deserves to have something come out at him.” The detectives in these stories are exceptionally competent at a time when we feel anxious and insecure; they overcome violent threats at a time when we feel overwhelmed by danger; they have a clear moral code when we are living in murky unclarity; they uncover the truth when we are unsure about what comes next. While there is usually loss in these stories, the detective triumphs over danger and wins in the end. I think at this difficult moment, we would all like to triumph over danger and win in the end.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold is a spy story, not a detective story. There are similarities: a murky situation, life and death stakes, and the hero-spy who must act in the face of danger and uncertainty. Despite the similarities, this spy story – and perhaps all spy stories – is the inverse of the detective story in one key aspect. The detective has a moral code, but the spy has no moral code: the spy does whatever is necessary to protect their country. This film explicitly says that there is no difference between the spies of the “free” world and those of Soviet Block. Alex Leamas, the British spy in this movie, says: “What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not! They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers [sic], hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?” While the detective triumphs precisely because they hold fast to their moral code, the spy is defeated when they try to act from morals instead of expediency.

I really liked this film even though it deviated from what I like most about the detective story. It is well-acted by Richard Burton, Clair Bloom, and the other cast members, and it is well directed by Martin Ritt. I would like to say a word or two about the director Martin Ritt, who doesn’t get the attention and respect he deserves. There is a strong thread of politics – social criticism and morality – in his movies without them ever becoming didactic or preachy. I love his early movie Edge of the City (1957) which is an answer movie to On the Waterfront – a movie I love even if it is Elia Kazan’s justification for naming names. Edge of the City, featuring John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier, and Jack Warden, is about a dock worker who confronts the corrupt gangsters directly, rather than cowardly naming names. After seeing this movie, it comes as no surprise that Ritt was blacklisted for his politics and was a former friend of Kazan. Ritt has made many other great movies: a partial list includes Hud, Sounder, The Front, and the beloved Norma Rae. Ritt is one of my favorite directors, and you can expect more of his movies to show up in this blog diary.