Mark.Kermode's.Secrets.Of.Cinema.S02e03.[Spies]
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00:00CINEMATIC MUSIC
00:18Follow me, yeah?
00:20DRAMATIC MUSIC
00:27Cinema likes clean-cut heroes,
00:30good guys who fight bad guys out in the open.
00:33The cop, the soldier, the fireman,
00:36the fearless reporter, the crusading lawyer, the superhero.
00:42But others fight in the shadows.
00:44They exist in a world not of black and white, but shades of grey.
00:49These are the cloak-and-dagger men, the disavowable operatives,
00:53licensed to kill but often left out in the cold.
00:57The secret agent, the hired assassin, the spy.
01:10A woman.
01:16Take the bloody shot!
01:20Yeah, baby!
01:23In Secrets Of Cinema, I explore the conventions
01:26which underwrite the movies we love the most
01:28and examine the techniques filmmakers use to keep us coming back for more.
01:33Shoot the traitor.
01:36Now.
01:39Tonight, I'm looking at one of the most distinctive and popular genres of all,
01:43one that plays on our paranoia and feeds our fears,
01:46as well as fulfilling our fantasies of secret missions and special skills.
01:50It's also given us perhaps the most famous hero in all of cinema.
01:55Can I do something for you, Mr Bond?
01:58Er, just a drink.
02:00A martini, shaken, not stirred.
02:10This is the end
02:12of the line
02:16Hold your breath and count to ten
02:21Two of my favourite films from the last ten years
02:24are Skyfall and Tinker Taylor's Soldier Spy.
02:27They couldn't be more different.
02:29Tinker Taylor is an artful, psychological drama,
02:32while Skyfall is a big, bold action movie.
02:38But their central characters, the fearless secret agent
02:41and the analytical intelligence officer,
02:43are the key archetypes of the spy genre.
02:47And in this post-truth era,
02:49the shifting, uncertain world of espionage seems closer to home than ever.
02:56Of course, spies have been around since ancient Egypt.
02:59Moses sent 12 agents into Canaan
03:01and bad intel kept the Israelites in the desert for 40 years.
03:05But the spy story proper didn't exist until the late 19th century,
03:09when nations got organised about running intelligence services.
03:12A couple of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories
03:15feature Sherlock's brother Mycroft, who's a shadowy government man.
03:19Other writers, like Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham,
03:22also dabbled in espionage.
03:24What's on your mind, General?
03:29My dear friend, you have given us big, big trouble for a long time.
03:34Sand.
03:35Sabotage.
03:36Wrecking.
03:37Deliberate.
03:38Deliberate? What's at the back of it?
03:40Who did it?
03:44The emerging genre of spy literature
03:46fired the imagination of a young British director called Alfred Hitchcock.
03:51Hitchcock was attracted to espionage for its psychological dimension,
03:55the sense that the world was hostile,
03:57that no-one, especially a woman on a train, could be trusted,
04:01that quirky, malicious forces could suddenly decide to pick on anyone
04:05and throw them onto a crazy rollercoaster ride
04:08with a potentially deadly outcome.
04:11This is the man you want, I think?
04:14When we first just know.
04:15Walked his way in here and told me his name was Hanny.
04:18Is your name Hanny?
04:19No.
04:20Are you coming in for tea, sir?
04:21Have a right along.
04:27Even Hitchcock's famous cameo appearances have the whiff of espionage.
04:31He's always there, pretending to read a newspaper,
04:34slipping out of a party early, loitering with intent,
04:37watching us, watching him, the ultimate undercover director.
04:51Alfred Hitchcock didn't invent the spy film genre single-handed.
04:54The Austrian director Fritz Lang explored the world
04:57of the diabolical international mastermind
05:00in his Dr Mabuse films of the 1920s
05:03and in Spiona, Spies, in 1928.
05:06Both of these were influenced by the earlier French thriller serials
05:10of Louis Foyard, like Fantomas.
05:26But Hitchcock dominated the origins of the spy film
05:29with such pre-war British thrillers as The Lady Vanishes.
05:33Listen carefully.
05:34In case I'm unlucky and you get through,
05:36I want you to take back a message to a Mr Callender
05:39at the Foreign Office in Whitehall.
05:41Then you are a spy.
05:42I always think that's such a grim word.
05:44What is the message?
05:46He continued to set the tone
05:48in a succession of sophisticated Hollywood movies.
05:51May I have your picture, Mr Van Meer? Thank you.
06:03Push me away.
06:07Hitchcock was the master of the shifting,
06:10uneasy world of mistrust and suspense.
06:23This development was taken to a whole new level
06:26in the spectacular romantic adventure North By North West.
06:34WHIRRING
06:43SCREAMS
06:44The heroes are often accidental.
06:46Robert Donat's Richard Hannay connects with the wrong woman
06:49at a music hall in The 39 Steps.
06:52Well, here we are.
06:55May I come home with you?
06:57What's the idea?
06:59While Cary Grant's adman Roger Thornhill
07:02is mistaken for a non-existent agent in North By North West...
07:07Wait a minute. Wait, wait.
07:09Did you call me Kaplan?
07:11I know you're a man of many names,
07:13but I'm perfectly willing to accept your current choice.
07:15Current choice?
07:17My name is Thornhill.
07:18Roger Thornhill. There's never been anything else.
07:21These unwitting protagonists are forced to adapt
07:24to survive an ordeal that could, and has,
07:26led to the deaths of trained agents.
07:30Hitchcock's influence on the look and feel of the action is critical.
07:34Sean Connery said that the early James Bond films
07:37would have looked very different
07:39without the model of North By North West.
07:41For proof of that, look at the visual style
07:44of these two aerial attack scenes from North By North West,
07:47which Hitchcock made in 1959,
07:49and the Bond film from Russia With Love, just four years later.
07:54Many spy pictures before the 1960s
07:57are more like a strand of film noir.
07:59They're often stories of small men caught up in vast intrigues.
08:03Fritz Lang made a film of Graeme Green's The Ministry Of Fear in 1944,
08:07and a couple of years later,
08:09set nuclear physicist Gary Cooper's The Greatest Showman.
08:12It's a film about a man who's been caught up in vast intrigues
08:15for a long time.
08:17It's a film about a man who's been caught up in vast intrigues
08:20for a long time.
08:22It's about nuclear physicist Gary Cooper
08:24on the trail of Nazi atom secrets
08:26in the emblematically titled Cloak And Dagger.
08:29Wilson speaking.
08:31Listen carefully.
08:33Don't say anything over this phone. You don't have to.
08:36Yes.
08:43Geheime Staatspolizei.
08:45Your name?
08:47Corinne van Leroy.
08:49Address?
08:51In the 1950s, filmmakers began to shine a light
08:54on the inside workings of espionage in a run of fact-based films,
08:58like Carve Her Name With Pride,
09:00in which Virginia McKenna played wartime special operations agent
09:03Violette Zabo,
09:05or Five Fingers, which featured James Mason
09:08as the infamous spy codenamed Cicero.
09:21As the decade progressed, the escalating nuclear arms race
09:24informed a series of bleak B-movies,
09:26like Pick Up On South Street
09:28and the near-apocalyptic Kiss Me Deadly,
09:31at stake was not just the formula for a new aeroplane fuel
09:34or a map of gun emplacements,
09:36but the plans for potential Armageddon.
09:45These global threats demanded a new kind of hero.
09:52EXPLOSION
10:02In 1962, a spy film came along that changed everything
10:06and began a hugely successful franchise that's still running today.
10:10BUZZER
10:12Oh, it's Bonnie Penny. Forget the usual repartee. 007's in a hurry.
10:16Dr No, based on Ian Fleming's 1958 novel,
10:20featured James Bond, a spy who was out of the shadows.
10:25Ciao.
10:27Good luck.
10:29Bond can hardly be called a secret agent.
10:32He lives the most flamboyant lifestyle imaginable,
10:35even introducing himself by his real name.
10:38Bond.
10:40James Bond.
10:42Mr Bond, I suppose you wouldn't care to, um, raise the limit?
10:46I have no objections.
10:49The Bond movies were in colour,
10:51where previous spy films had tended to be black and white.
10:55And there was a modern edge to Bond's jet-setting consumerism.
11:01These are films which make much of boarding flights to faraway places
11:05and staying in glamorous hotels.
11:07Imagine how they played to audiences
11:09who had barely got used to the end of rationing.
11:14Dr No kicked off a spy boom which was, to the 1960s,
11:17what disaster movies and Star Wars were in the 70s
11:20and what Marvel movies are to the present.
11:23No longer just spies, but super spies,
11:26a parade of agents starring in the big escapist pictures of the age.
11:37Connery's 007 had a host of rivals.
11:40There was James Coburn as playboy agent Derek Flint,
11:43brought out of retirement to fight a trio of mad scientists
11:46in Our Man Flint.
11:48Why would anyone want to kill Mr Cramden?
11:50I would think the doctor was meant for me.
11:53Seems I have a job, whether I want one or not.
11:56You think I walked in here without knowing I could walk out?
12:00Freya?
12:04Tell them the tourist bureau, they know where I am, right?
12:07Oh, no, no, Mr Helm.
12:09No, Mr Helm?
12:10No, our clients have complete privacy.
12:12No one knows who you are.
12:15Then there's Matt Helm, who works for ICE,
12:18intelligence and counter-espionage.
12:20Dean Martin's Helm had four outings,
12:22the last of which, The Wrecking Crew, also starred Sharon Tate,
12:26the actress whose fate at the hands of the Manson family
12:29was recently reimagined by Quentin Tarantino.
12:32Scenes from The Wrecking Crew featured in Tarantino's
12:35peer-in-to-60s tinsel town, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
12:45Oh...
12:48Oh!
12:52In the 1960s, everyone wanted to be a spy.
12:55On TV, there was Danger Man, Mission Impossible
12:58and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
13:00Even Fred Flintstone in his big-screen spin-off
13:03yearned to be a spy-type guy,
13:05with his own blazing theme song playing over the titles.
13:09HE SINGS
13:28In Bond movies, the title sequence is one of the primary ways
13:32to establish the mood and tone of what's to follow.
13:35Maurice Binder was the designer of the iconic gun barrel sequence
13:39first seen in Doctor No.
13:41Binder went on making the Bond titles for over 30 years.
13:47Combined with specially composed title songs,
13:50these would become mini-movies in their own right,
13:53which cleverly prefigure the plots and action of the main feature.
13:57HE SINGS
14:06HE CONTINUES SINGING
14:14Their style reflects the times.
14:16In the 70s, sexy silhouettes were the order of the day.
14:20But the 2006 Casino Royale titles indicated a smarter, sharper edge
14:25and a new, uncompromising Bond.
14:28HE SINGS
14:36Super-spy movies have overwhelmingly tended to be
14:39male fantasy vehicles,
14:41in which women are all too often portrayed as disposable bimbos
14:45or gold-sprayed victims.
14:47They are secondary characters,
14:49who can be innocents caught up in intrigue,
14:51avengers of murdered loved ones,
14:53or bad girls won over by the hero's sexual prowess.
14:59You can turn off the charm. I'm immune.
15:02In the film's opening, Hanna Blackman's Pussy Galore,
15:05a lesbian in the novel, is won over by Bond's lovemaking,
15:09though only after some nifty judo throws.
15:12You've asked for this.
15:18For decades, the Bond films were largely white affairs,
15:21with black actors only to be found in secondary roles
15:24as bit-part players or henchmen.
15:26In Die Another Day, African-American actress Halle Berry
15:30echoing Ursula Andress 40 years earlier.
15:35But as NSA agent Jinx Johnson,
15:38she broke the mould and fought alongside 007.
15:45The one returning female character in the Bond series
15:48is M Secretary Miss Moneypenny.
15:51Moneypenny.
15:53What gives?
15:54Her primary purpose was to flirt with 007.
15:58You never take me to dinner looking like this, James.
16:01You never take me to dinner, period.
16:03I would, you know.
16:05Only Anne would have me court-martialed
16:07for illegal use of government property.
16:12But when British star Naomi Harris became the first black actress
16:15to play Moneypenny in Skyfall,
16:17her version of the character came out from behind the desk
16:20to take an active role in the field.
16:22It's not clean.
16:24Repeat, I do not have a clean shot.
16:27Over the years, there have been attempts,
16:29in and out of the 007 series,
16:32to come up with a female super-spy.
16:35In the 1960s, Monica Vitti wasn't quite right
16:38as the comic strip agent Modesty Blaze.
16:44Then there's Nikita from 1990,
16:47in which Anne Pario plays a criminal
16:49who's forced to become a glamorous but deadly assassin
16:52by unscrupulous male authority figures.
16:57HE SPEAKS FRENCH
17:11In Salt, made in 2010,
17:13Angelina Jolie plays a CIA operative
17:16who may be a double agent.
17:18Having escaped from the authorities,
17:20she's just as dangerous as Bourne or Bond on the run.
17:27HE SCREAMS
17:31Jesus Christ.
17:35I'll check the back.
17:37Her character, Evelyn Salt, was originally called Edwin
17:40and was meant to be played by Tom Cruise,
17:42but he dropped out because it was too close to Mission Impossible.
17:46Jolie's ambition was to create the first female spy franchise,
17:50but it got no further than this film.
17:53HE SINGS
17:58Gender equality in the super-spy movie
18:00may finally have come of age in the 2017 hit Atomic Blonde.
18:05Charlize Theron's MI6 agent may be battle-scarred,
18:08but she's ultimately triumphant
18:10thanks to her bone-crunching fighting prowess.
18:16Where's 007?
18:18And in the latest Bond film, No Time To Die,
18:21Brianna Lynch takes one significant step further
18:24and achieves 00 status.
18:26The world's moved on, Commander Bond.
18:28You were 00? Two years.
18:32So stay in your lane. You get in my way, I will put a bullet in your knee.
18:39The one that works.
18:41I thought you two would get along.
18:44The strategy of the spy movie is to take us behind the scenes,
18:48to show us how the business of espionage is done.
18:51This spycraft is frequently embodied by the technology and equipment
18:56that the agent uses to carry out their mission.
18:59On the side here, flat throwing knife.
19:02Press that button there, and out she comes.
19:05In the Bond films, there are the increasingly bizarre gadgets
19:09issued to 007 by Q Branch,
19:11beginning in From Russia With Love
19:13with an attaché case that conceals multiple secrets.
19:18Now, watch very carefully.
19:20An ordinary tin of talcum powder.
19:22And reaching absurd heights with the invisible car
19:26that no-one could take seriously in Die Another Day.
19:31Oh, very good.
19:33No element of the spy film is as easy to parody
19:36as the super-spy gadget,
19:38here demonstrated by Rowan Atkinson's well-meaning
19:41but incompetent MI7 operative, Johnny English.
19:45Oh, reminds me of the old service issue, Ballpoint.
19:48I remember every agent would carry a pen like this,
19:51and I'd have to write a letter to him,
19:53and I'd have to write a letter to him,
19:55and I'd have to write a letter to him,
19:57and I'd have to write a letter to him,
19:59and every agent would carry a pen that looked just like this,
20:02completely innocent to the untrained eye,
20:04but click it twice...
20:09But James Bond originally used simpler, more improvised methods,
20:13such as the single hair stuck with spit
20:15to the hotel room door in Doctor No,
20:17designed to let him know if anyone had searched his room
20:20while he was out.
20:22And in Skyfall, there's a return to basics,
20:25as Q wryly explains to Bond in this scene.
20:30A gun...
20:32and a radio.
20:34Not exactly Christmas, is it?
20:37Were you expecting an exploding pen?
20:41We don't really go in for that any more.
20:46Spy films thrive on tiny details.
20:49The business of manufacturing a cover identity with documentation
20:53is always fascinating,
20:55and so is the meticulous, methodical business
20:57of actual espionage via hidden cameras and listening devices.
21:07The compelling and chilling Stasi drama The Lives Of Others
21:11concentrates on listening and watching,
21:14and the toll that kind of spying takes on the spy and the spied-upon.
21:23I haven't decided what I'm going to get you yet.
21:28HE COUGHS
21:30There's also the potential for catastrophic errors
21:33and misunderstandings.
21:35Get him for Christmas yet. He's already got everything.
21:41The plot of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation,
21:44which turns out to involve murder rather than industrial espionage,
21:48hinges on a simple phrase.
21:50He'd kill us if he got the chance.
21:53The problem is that surveillance expert Harry Cole,
21:56played by Gene Hackman, misinterprets what he hears,
21:59leading to a descent into paranoia and a lethal outcome.
22:11But what happens when the subject of surveillance is on the move
22:15and needs to be stalked in secret?
22:18BELL RINGS
22:25Pursuit sequences have been a staple of the spy genre
22:28since the beginning.
22:30The careful tailing of somebody in a public place
22:33and the difficulties of not losing them in a crowd.
22:38What happened? I'm not sure yet.
22:41The hunt is on and the obstacles are many,
22:44but the primary rule for the pursuer and the pursued
22:47is don't get caught.
22:51Excuse me.
22:58The proliferation of CCTV and satellite observation technology
23:02has given filmmakers a 360-degree perspective
23:05on this game of cat and mouse.
23:07Audio engaged.
23:09Mobile one should have him. Get mobile one on it.
23:12Let me know when you hear it.
23:14Waterloo Station, south entrance.
23:16In The Bourne Ultimatum, director Paul Greengrass
23:19constructed a nerve-jangling ultra-mobile chase
23:22through the crowds at Waterloo Station.
23:27Do exactly as I say. Move up to your right.
23:30First escalator on the right.
23:35The production tricked commuters
23:37by pretending to film at one end of the concourse
23:40while the real action was being captured elsewhere.
23:46Tie your shoe. Tie your shoe right now. Tie your shoe.
23:49Hand-held cameras, fast cutting
23:52and John Powell's urgent, unsettling score
23:55combine to immerse us in the hunt.
23:58I'm going to walk by you.
24:00I want you to move along the far wall to your left.
24:03In four, three, two, one, stand up.
24:06That's it.
24:08Spies are also detectives
24:10and some of the most thrilling moments come
24:12when the audience gets to spot a clue along with the protagonist.
24:15The fake nun wearing high-heeled shoes in The Lady Vanishes.
24:19Sean Connery identifying assassin Robert Shorin from Russia With Love.
24:24I'll have a bottle of the Blanc de Blanc.
24:26Make mine Chianti.
24:28White Chianti, monsieur? No, the red kind.
24:31Because the fake gent makes a faux pas at the dinner table.
24:36Red wine with fish.
24:38That should have told me something.
24:41You men know the right wines.
24:43You're the one on your knees.
24:46Or how about Colin Firth giving away
24:48that he's just spent the night with Smiley's wife in Tinker Tailor
24:51as he tries to slip his shoes on.
24:54I was just passing. I thought I'd call in.
24:57Anne was in bed but she insisted on getting up.
25:00Said she'd be down in a minute.
25:03These are the moments that make us feel really involved
25:06in the unfolding drama.
25:11It's keeping up.
25:22Diligent detective work forms the basis of the realistic spy films
25:26that emerged in contrast to the super-spy fantasies.
25:30Harry Palmer, the name given to the unnamed spy of Len Dayton's novels
25:34when they were filmed, is nothing like Bond,
25:37a civil servant who rightly doesn't trust his bosses
25:40and spends more time on dreary bureaucracy than fighting.
25:44What is Form L101?
25:47Field report. You've got to make one out after every job.
25:50Makes Dolby happy, if nothing else.
25:52You mean I've got to ask about Grant B in 19 different places
25:56and then make out 19 lots of silly answers?
25:58Aye, that's about it, laddie.
26:00You'll soon find out this job's nearly all legwork.
26:09The Ipcrest file was made by some of the same team as the Bond movies,
26:13including composer John Barry,
26:15who created an evocative, low-key and brooding score.
26:19The opening titles show us Palmer in his kitchen,
26:22although he's making real coffee,
26:24a sign of culinary discernment when instant was the norm.
26:28Michael Caine imbues his bespectacled working-class character
26:31with a deadpan cool that is just as hip and snappy
26:35as 007 with his martinis and post-murder quips.
26:49Shocking.
26:50More authentic still are the films made from John Le Carre's novels
26:54about the branch of British intelligence codenamed The Circus
26:58and the desk-squatting, pen-pushing spy George Smiley.
27:02What about Smiley?
27:04Smiley is leaving with me.
27:07Alec Guinness owned the role on television
27:10and there are excellent portrayals by Rupert Davis
27:13in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
27:15and James Mason in The Deadly Affair.
27:18But for my money, Gary Oldman was the perfect Smiley
27:23in Thomas Alfredson's superb adaptation of Tinker Taylor's Soldier Spy.
27:28His portrayal of the inscrutable agent was delicate and nuanced.
27:33Smiley is the real anti-bond.
27:36Not a womaniser, he's married to an unfaithful wife
27:39who sleeps with his enemies.
27:41Not a man of action, he sits in his office and ponders
27:44while agents suffer and die in the field.
27:47He's worn down by office politics and personal betrayals,
27:51even as he's asked to do the sort of rotten things that make him wonder
27:55whether his side's methods are in any way morally superior to the enemy's.
28:06Alec Lemus, another of Le Carre's creations, is in no doubt
28:10as he shows in this eloquent and bitter outburst.
28:14What the hell do you think spies are?
28:16Moral philosophers measuring everything they do
28:18against the word of God or Karl Marx?
28:20They're not.
28:21They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me.
28:24Little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands,
28:27civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives.
28:31Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong?
28:35Yesterday I would have killed Mundt
28:37because I thought him evil and an enemy, but not today.
28:40Today he's evil and my friend.
28:42London needs him.
28:43They need him so that the great moronic masses you admire so much
28:46can sleep soundly in their flea-bitten beds again.
28:48They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me.
28:53Look at us.
28:57Look at what they make you give.
29:08Every spy has a boss.
29:10It's not very comfortable, is it?
29:13Are you going to complain the whole way?
29:15Oh, go on, then, eject me.
29:17M, the head of MI6 in the Bond movies,
29:20is based on a real post that exists
29:22in the very hierarchical British civil service.
29:26I would ask you if you could remain emotionally detached.
29:30But I don't think that's your problem, is it, Bond?
29:34No.
29:37But in cinema, the relationship between spy and spy chief
29:41is frequently an uneasy one.
29:44Come in, Palmer.
29:50Sergeant Palmer reporting as ordered, sir.
29:53Close the door, Palmer.
29:55Movie spies are the ultimate loners,
29:57mavericks and rule-breakers who don't take instruction easily.
30:05You just love the army, don't you?
30:07Oh, yes, sir, I just love the army, sir.
30:11Shut the door.
30:13In the Ipcrest file, Harry Palmer has not one but two bosses to contend with.
30:21One of whom may be a traitor.
30:24It isn't usual to read a B107 to its subject, Palmer,
30:29but I'm going to put you straight.
30:33Insubordinate.
30:37Insolent.
30:40A trickster.
30:43Perhaps with criminal tendencies.
30:47Yes, that's a pretty fair appraisal, sir.
30:50Who are you to judge my actions?
30:52I'm your superior.
31:00My superior.
31:03The movie spy boss is an authority figure
31:06whose superior knowledge gives them an overview of the unfolding situation.
31:10I don't think I caught your name.
31:12I don't think I pitched it.
31:14You're police, aren't you, or is it FBI?
31:17FBI, CIA, ONI, we're all in the same alphabet soup.
31:21The archetype of this character is the CIA chief
31:24played by Leo G. Carroll in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
31:28Carroll went on to reprise the role as Alexander Waverley
31:31in the Uncle films and TV series of the 1960s.
31:35The first thing the spy boss must do is to brief the agent on their mission,
31:40and this is where the MacGuffin comes in.
31:43Hello, Austin. I'm Basil Exposition with British Intelligence.
31:48The MacGuffin is a term popularised by Alfred Hitchcock.
31:51It simply means a plot device,
31:53here the thing that brings our opposing spies into action.
31:57Your mission, should you choose to accept it,
31:59is to prevent the Apostles from acquiring plutonium
32:02using any means at your disposal.
32:04Hitchcock said that the point of a MacGuffin
32:06was that all the characters should care about it, but the audience doesn't.
32:10We promised Spyglass immunity in exchange for a document on microfilm
32:14codenamed The List.
32:16He has intelligence of a plot to assassinate the Chinese premier
32:19at the Anglo-Chinese talks next week.
32:22Jamal Khaled. We think he's dirty, so we raid his private financial files.
32:26Unfortunately, the IP address I traced it to
32:29is registered to the Valentine Corporation.
32:32It's an atomic bomb of information
32:34that could extend the Cold War for another 40 years.
32:37The bottom line is, Reina Boyanoff is about to sell
32:40a small-scale tactical nuclear weapon to a terrorist organisation
32:43and we don't know where she or the bomb is.
32:45Well, in that case, Pegasus, count me in.
32:51In other words, the MacGuffin is just an excuse
32:53for the action to take place.
32:55Every adaptation of John Buchan's novel The 39 Steps
32:58has a different explanation of what the title means,
33:01but in each case, it's a MacGuffin.
33:04What are the 39 Steps?
33:07Come on, answer up! What are the 39 Steps?
33:10The 39 Steps is an organisation of spies
33:14collecting information on behalf of the Foreign Office of...
33:18Oh!
33:19SCREAMING
33:22The MacGuffin might be incriminating letters,
33:25the plans for a new superweapon,
33:27wine bottles full of uranium,
33:29or perhaps the mysterious Ipcress process
33:32that apparently indoctrinates Harry Palmer.
33:35However, in cinema, it's often the part of the spy boss
33:38to be duplicitous, even with their own agents.
33:41A shark can smell blood a mile off when he's hungry.
33:45And Munch is hungry for our blood.
33:50He's hungry for our blood.
33:52Name me a counter-espionage head who isn't hungry
33:55for one high-grade defecting spy.
33:58So I'm to defect.
34:00M is unusually trustworthy.
34:02We need to tread carefully.
34:04Graves is politically connected.
34:08Lucky I'm on the outside, then.
34:10Well, it seems you've become useful again.
34:14But how many other spy chiefs send their minions off to die
34:18as part of a scheme they don't fully explain
34:21and which turns out to be highly dubious?
34:25In the Mission Impossible films,
34:27the unseen man who records those instructions for Ethan Hunt
34:31doesn't give him the whole story,
34:33forcing the hero to go against his handlers as well as the enemy.
34:38Good evening, Mr Hunt.
34:40The anarchist Solomon Lane.
34:42Since you captured him two years ago,
34:44his absence from the world stage has had unintended consequences.
34:48BUZZER
34:51In The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,
34:53Cyril Cusack plays the manipulative agency head known as Control.
34:58I want you to, er...
35:01..to stay out in the cold...
35:04..a little longer.
35:07Please do sit down.
35:09His ambiguous, slippery portrayal leaves us uneasy and fearful
35:13for the fate of the central character, played by Richard Burton.
35:18Our work, as I understand it, is based on a single assumption
35:22that the West is never going to be the aggressor.
35:26Thus...
35:28..we do disagreeable things, but we're defensive.
35:33Our policies are peaceful,
35:35but our methods can't afford to be less ruthless
35:38than those of the opposition.
35:40Can they?
35:44Jack Ryan, in a series of films derived from Tom Clancy's
35:48very pro-CIA novels,
35:50is a rare attempt to depict the spy boss as a thoroughly good guy.
35:54But even then, cynicism creeps in.
35:57Here, Harrison Ford's Ryan tells off the ultimate spy boss,
36:01the President, in clear and present danger.
36:04You should never make important decisions while you're upset.
36:08You did.
36:10And American soldiers and innocent civilians are dead because of it.
36:14I never ordered any...
36:15No, don't even think about playing that game with me.
36:18The ultimate expression of this disillusionment
36:21comes in the highly successful Jason Bourne series,
36:24based on Robert Ludlam's very anti-CIA novels.
36:28In these films, the hero has been robbed of his identity
36:32and discarded by his employers.
36:36He must fight his own former masters
36:38rather than his country's enemies,
36:40pitting his exceptional combat and survival skills
36:43against a vast organisation of ruthless killers.
36:52Code in, please.
36:55Who the hell are you?
36:58The man you've sent is dead,
37:00so whoever this is, you'd better start talking.
37:04Hello, Jason.
37:15The secret establishment cabal of the Bourne films
37:18can be directly traced to a strain of paranoid spy thrillers
37:22in the 1960s and 70s.
37:24This was the era of the Cold War,
37:26the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam and Watergate.
37:30Conspiracy theories were rife.
37:33At the beginning of this period,
37:35paranoia permeates John Frankenheimer's chilling thriller
37:38The Manchurian Candidate.
37:40Frank Sinatra plays a Korean War veteran
37:43who uncovers a sinister plot involving an assassin
37:46programmed to kill a presidential nominee
37:49and change the balance of power in the USA.
37:53My fellow Americans!
38:00You couldn't have stopped them, the army couldn't have stopped them,
38:03so I had to.
38:04Extreme camera angles, distorting lenses and unorthodox framing
38:09give The Manchurian Candidate an uneasy, dislocating atmosphere
38:13and draw us into a nightmarish world.
38:16Then Johnny will really hit those microphones and those cameras
38:20with blood all over him,
38:22fighting off anyone who tries to help him,
38:24defending America even if it means his own death,
38:27rallying a nation of television viewers into hysteria
38:31to sweep us up into the White House
38:33with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy.
38:37It's a film that feels alarmingly relevant.
38:40Some commentators have made analogies
38:42with The Manchurian Candidate
38:44when describing alleged foreign interference
38:46in present-day politics.
38:48These pictures were filmed in stark black and white,
38:51but later in the 60s and 70s,
38:53this gave way to steely, muted colour cinematography
38:57in conspiracy thrillers like The Parallax View
39:00and Three Days Of The Condor.
39:05Who is it?
39:06Richard Paley.
39:10Who is it?
39:11Are you Richard Paley?
39:13Who?
39:14Who?
39:20Who wants it?
39:23Congratulations, Richard.
39:25You had some very interesting scores
39:27on the first series of tests for parallax.
39:30Testing for what?
39:32The Parallax Corporation.
39:39In Three Days Of The Condor,
39:41Robert Redford is a bookish CIA researcher
39:43who comes back from buying lunch
39:45to find all of his colleagues in the station have been killed.
39:49He must uncover the reason and keep himself alive.
39:52The enemy here is hidden within the state itself.
39:55Let's say, for the purposes of argument,
39:59I had a .45 in one of my pockets...
40:03..and I wanted you to take a walk with me.
40:05You'd do it, right?
40:09When governments act like Spectre or Thrush,
40:12it seems there's unlikely to be a super spy to fight them.
40:16In fact, the licence to kill is the province of faceless hitmen
40:20who pick off our heroes with assassins' rifles.
40:26Witness the end of The Parallax View,
40:29a single shot, and it's all over for our side.
40:42Look after Mr Bond.
40:45See that some harm comes to him.
40:50Just as movie spies have a boss, so they also need a nemesis,
40:54the evil genius that our hero must pit themselves against.
40:58Scott, I want you to meet Daddy's nemesis, Austin Powers.
41:05What, are you feeding him? Why don't you just kill him?
41:08No, Scott, I have an even better idea.
41:12I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation
41:15involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
41:18With your disregard for human life, you must be working for the East.
41:21East, West, just points of the compass, each as stupid as the other.
41:25I'm a member of Spectre.
41:27Spectre? Spectre.
41:29In fact, the figure of the scheming mastermind predates the super spy.
41:34The successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be.
41:38Early examples like Fu Manchu first appeared in the 1920s and 30s.
41:43These prototype supervillains are far more memorable
41:46than the mundane heroes who tried to thwart their schemes.
41:50This is gold, Mr Bond.
41:53All my life, I've been in love with its colour,
41:56its brilliance, its divine heaviness.
42:00I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock.
42:04The Bond villain, whether a maniac billionaire or a calculating ideologue,
42:09is a powerful archetype.
42:11Are you ready, Monsieur Scaramanga?
42:16Ready.
42:17Are you ready, Monsieur Bond?
42:20Ready.
42:21It even crops up in far less fantastical films.
42:25George, get in here!
42:27George Smiley's long duel with the Soviet spymaster Karla...
42:31George.
42:32..is just as personal as Bond's feud with Spectre's Blofeld.
42:37The firing power inside my crater is enough to annihilate a small army.
42:43You can watch it all on TV.
42:45It's the last programme you're likely to see.
42:48Then there were the thugs and assassins.
42:51Even before Ian Fleming, these tended to be strange, misfit characters.
42:56Look at Peter Lorre in The Secret Agent and The Man Who Knew Too Much,
43:00and the unforgettable-looking Reggie Nolder in the 1956 version of that film.
43:05These were the ancestors of Oddjob, Jaws
43:08and a host of less-remembered hitmen, bodyguards and wetwork specialists.
43:16And then there are the snitches, informers, double agents, betrayers
43:20and disposable goons who get dropped along the way,
43:24with barely a pause for thought.
43:26Let me help you with your bags.
43:31For fuck's sake.
43:32The Russians are fucking heavy.
43:36It ups the stakes, of course, to pit a hero against his exact opposite number,
43:41or a version of himself gone over to the dark side,
43:45like Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt battling Henry Cavill's formidable rogue agent
43:50in Mission Impossible Fallout.
44:00The worst villains of all, of course, are the traitors and double agents,
44:04the moles sought by George Smiley,
44:06the power-hungry higher-ups who've deemed Jason Bourne expendable.
44:11I'm not sure what we're talking about.
44:13Someone tried to take him out.
44:15Tried and failed.
44:18The more grounded in fact a spy film is,
44:21the more understanding is extended to the adversary.
44:24We are agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
44:27Look at me. I'm talking to you.
44:29We've received information concerning your involvement in espionage.
44:33You can either cooperate with us right now, or you'll be under arrest.
44:37Do you understand, Colonel?
44:38No, not really.
44:40Why do you keep calling me Colonel?
44:43In Steven Spielberg's taut Cold War drama Bridge of Spies,
44:47we identify just as much with the ambiguous Soviet undercover man,
44:51played by Mark Rylance, as we do with his American lawyer, Tom Hanks.
44:56I have a mandate to serve you. Nobody else does.
44:58Quite frankly, everybody else has an interest in sending you to the electric chair.
45:02All right.
45:07You don't seem alarmed.
45:14Would it help?
45:17The Cold War did not end.
45:19It shattered into a thousand dangerous species.
45:22The West has grown weak,
45:24drunk on shopping and social media.
45:27In the post-Cold War thriller Red Sparrow, made in 2018,
45:30Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova,
45:33a ballet dancer turned Russian intelligence officer.
45:36Ever since I was a small child,
45:39I would take the bus to rehearsal after school,
45:43and I would look out of the windows at the people going about their lives,
45:47going to work half asleep,
45:50and I would tell myself,
45:52I'm not like them,
45:55and I never will be,
45:58because I'm special.
46:06Take off your dress.
46:08Once again, our sympathies are with the spy.
46:11Trained to seduce by the state,
46:13she must run the gauntlet of enemies on both sides.
46:19Take off your dress.
46:22Using sex to obtain secrets is one of the oldest tropes of the spy film.
46:27In 1930s Hollywood,
46:29the dominant image of the movie spy was a woman,
46:32inspired by the fame of Dutch dancer and agent Margarethe Zeller,
46:36known as Mata Hari, during World War I.
46:39Greta Garbo played her in a fictionalised biopic.
46:43Of course, being a famous spy isn't good for business,
46:46and following her famous seductions and famous espionage,
46:50she was even more famously shot at dawn.
46:53While in the same year,
46:55screen siren Marlene Dietrich appeared in a Mata Hari-like role
46:59in Joseph von Sternberg's Dishonoured.
47:02Are we going to walk together again?
47:09Do you happen to have a looking glass?
47:12I'm surprised Mr Devlin is coming tonight.
47:15I don't blame anyone for being in love with the dolly.
47:19I just hope that nothing will happen to give him any false impression.
47:24But within a minute...
47:26Notorious, made in 1946,
47:28was Hitchcock's most morally complex spy movie
47:31and really gets under the skin of the seductress,
47:34casting Ingrid Bergman as a woman
47:36manipulated into marrying fugitive Nazi Claude Rains.
47:41It's not that I don't trust you,
47:43but when you're in love at my age,
47:45every man who looks at you as a menace
47:47is afraid of even talking about it.
47:49I bet I can try.
47:59She must steal a key from her husband
48:01and get it to her fellow agent, Cary Grant.
48:04MUSIC PLAYS
48:14The action takes place in the well-heeled expat world of Rio de Janeiro.
48:21Watch how this beautifully choreographed crane shot
48:24takes us from high above a glamorous party gathering
48:27into an extreme close-up of our anxious heroine's hand
48:31clutching the vital key.
48:34MUSIC PLAYS
48:51Scotch? Rye? Bourbon? Vodka?
48:55Nothing, thank you. I'll just take a quick ride back to town.
48:58Oh, that has been arranged.
49:00But first, a libation.
49:03The tried-and-tested convention of the spy movie
49:05is that our protagonist is put in a series
49:07of increasingly dangerous situations,
49:09seemingly impossible to escape from,
49:12only for our resourceful agent, whether amateur or professional,
49:16to get away with it through quick thinking,
49:18skill and impressive stunt work.
49:21Here's Cary Grant in North by North West,
49:23filled with liquor and sent to certain death
49:26in a car on a cliff edge.
49:28MUSIC PLAYS
49:34Ooh!
49:38And here's Roger Moore in Moonraker,
49:40pushed out of a plane with no parachute.
49:43MUSIC PLAYS
49:57While Angelina Jolie, outnumbered and surrounded,
50:00does the only thing possible to stay free.
50:03There's nowhere to run! Quit now!
50:05I didn't do anything.
50:11Spies keep secrets and their enemies want those secrets,
50:15whatever that takes.
50:17Torture scenes are often found in spy films.
50:20Sometimes they're almost light-hearted,
50:22like the famous laser beam sequence in Goldfinger.
50:25Do you expect me to talk?
50:27No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!
50:36In Die Another Day in 2002,
50:39torture was incorporated into the title sequence,
50:42along with scorpions and dancing women,
50:45which felt wrong in so many ways.
50:49Wow.
50:51You've taken good care of your body.
50:54Torture represents the ultimate loss of control,
50:57where power is all in the hands of the interrogator.
51:01Casino Royale has a protracted and highly sexualised torture scene
51:06between Bond and Le Chiffre, an uncomfortable combination,
51:10especially in a film rated 12.
51:14But what about when the threat faced
51:16is the ticking clock of an unexploded bomb?
51:19This type of suspense set piece is a staple of the spy genre,
51:23and filmmakers deploy all their tricks to make our palms sweat.
51:30Look at these three sequences from Sabotage, Goldfinger
51:34and Mission Impossible Fallout.
51:36They're filmed in the same location,
51:38but they're a bit different.
51:40Goldfinger and Mission Impossible Fallout.
51:43They're found in films over 80 years apart,
51:46and each builds in different ways to a seemingly inevitable conclusion.
51:51Damn it. Ethan, the countdown has started. We have 15 minutes.
51:54Walker has the dictator.
51:57In Sabotage, from 1936,
52:00a young boy is unwittingly delivering a bomb.
52:03He's delayed en route to his destination,
52:06and the tension mounts to an almost unbearable pitch
52:09in the rhythm of the editing.
52:17In Sabotage and Goldfinger, made 30 years later,
52:21the music adopts a pulsing countdown tempo to increase suspense.
52:31Locked inside Fort Knox,
52:33Bond struggles to shut down a nuclear weapon
52:36which will explode in seconds.
52:38Rescuers are at hand, but time is running out fast.
52:46In Mission Impossible Fallout, there are not one but two bombs,
52:50and neither can be defused without access to the detonator,
52:53which is in the hands of the enemy.
52:55It's too late.
52:57No. I'm going to get the detonator.
52:59What? How? I'll figure it out.
53:02Find Lane. Find the other bomb.
53:05What the hell is he doing? I find it best not to look.
53:13The payoff in each of these three scenes is very different.
53:19In Sabotage, the tension builds and builds
53:22until the unthinkable happens.
53:26EXPLOSION
53:31In Goldfinger, the solution turns out to be simple.
53:37An anti-climax that defuses the threat.
53:42What kept you?
53:44While in Mission Impossible,
53:46the action becomes ever more frenetic and complex.
53:49Multiple twists and turns serve to ramp up the suspense
53:53as Bruce tries to grab the detonator...
53:56Hold this for me, will you?
53:58..while parallel editing takes us back and forth
54:01to those trying to stop the bombs.
54:03Wire strippers. I'm a doctor, not an electrician.
54:06Sorry. The thing with the green grip.
54:08Got it. The wire in my left hand.
54:10The black one. My left hand.
54:12That's your left hand. Sorry, the other wire.
54:14The red one. Yes, the red one in my right hand.
54:17Just checking.
54:24A series of mini-climaxes propel us to a grand conclusion.
54:29Why won't you just die?
54:34Hitchcock realised after making Sabotage
54:37that he'd made a great error allowing the bomb to explode,
54:40killing not only the young boy,
54:42but also a puppy on board the same bus.
54:45By doing so, he'd violated his primary rule of suspense,
54:49that it must always be relieved,
54:51otherwise the audience are left unhappy and unsatisfied.
55:04All right, Twinkle Toes, what's your exit strategy?
55:07I'm going to walk right out of the front gate.
55:09Ballsy. Stupid, but ballsy.
55:12It didn't have to end this way. Of course it did.
55:16So where does a spy film end with a mission accomplished?
55:21James Bond tends to thwart the diabolical schemes of his enemies
55:25in the most explosive way imaginable.
55:31Blowing up a secret base, personally killing a mastermind.
55:46And then relaxing in his own inimitable fashion.
55:51What are we going to do now?
55:53Well, we can swim or...
55:56Or what?
55:58Oh, no, you don't.
56:00This is no time to be rescued.
56:02No time to be rescued.
56:20Though the end credits promise James Bond will return,
56:24meaning that his struggle is never-ending.
56:27MUSIC PLAYS
56:31Or the drama can end more ambiguously in a classic spy film trope
56:35with an exchange of personnel at the border.
56:38In the real-life Cold War drama Bridge Of Spies,
56:40Tom Hanks' lawyer Donovan ensures the swap of two Americans for Abel,
56:44the captured spy played by Mark Rylance.
56:47But what will be the Russian agent's fate when he gets home?
56:57MUSIC STOPS
57:06We can be left in no-man's land in more ways than one.
57:09The spy who came in from the cold
57:11sees our two protagonists double-crossed
57:13as they attempt to scale the Berlin Wall.
57:20No pyrotechnics, just echoing gunshots
57:23and a lonely death on a stretch of waste ground.
57:26Jump, Alec! Jump, man!
57:29Shoot the traitor.
57:32Now!
57:38But sometimes the double-cross can be thwarted
57:41and the individual agent will overcome
57:43the power of the forces ranged against him.
57:45Harry Palmer resists the conditioning he's been subjected to
57:49and shoots the double agent.
57:52GUNSHOT
57:54While Jason Bourne turns his skills against the shadowy operatives
57:58who once controlled him.
58:02I remember.
58:05I remember everything.
58:16George Smiley too may calmly contrive the execution of a traitor
58:20and get back to work.
58:22In a post-Cold War, post-9-11, post-truth world,
58:26the rules may have changed, but the great game continues
58:30and the movie spy lives on.
58:32For a loving...
58:34Jump!
58:36For a loving...
58:38APPLAUSE
58:50THE END