Sara Batkie
There are essentially two kinds of celebrity notoriety: one that is sought out and one that is thrust upon. Over the course of his three decades on stage and screen, Richard Burton experienced both. A darling of the British theatre world in his youth – so much so that critic Kenneth Tynan called him “the natural successor to Olivier” – his transition to film was marred by heavy drinking and a tempestuous personal life. He would have turned one hundred this week; as it was, he died in 1984 just shy of sixty, not long after making his final appearance in the Orwell adaptation named for that year. The quality of Burton’s performances could vary along with the material, but it’s his turn in 1965’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold that provides his most subtly stinging commentary on his own image.
Author John Le Carré, who wrote the source novel, said that he was inspired to create the Alec Leamas character after seeing a “Peter Finch-like figure in a raincoat” pull out a wad of foreign bank notes at an airport to pay for a Scotch. Like Burton, Finch came up through the West End scene before transitioning to film. He was favored by Le Carré for the role but ultimately was deemed not enough of a box office draw. Instead Burton, a less reedy and cerebral performer than Finch, was cast. He was already a year into his first marriage with Elizabeth Taylor at the time, making him a tabloid fixture and an odd choice to play a man forced to keep his cards close to the vest. But that’s exactly why he ends up working so well.
Viewers more accustomed to the flashy spycraft of James Bond might be shocked by the comparatively sedate pace of Martin Ritt’s film. It’s shot in an austere black and white that gives the proceedings a chilly, mournful tone. The offices and safehouses are as deliberately anonymous as the operatives meeting in them. Though the plot isn’t devoid of twists and intrigue, it’s largely about the sort of unheralded grunt work that happens in secret and – in theory at least – keeps a democracy alive. Men are drawn to the field less from a sense of conviction than expediency, as Leamas puts it. Personal relationships are viewed as a liability, susceptible to exploitation. When Leamas insists in a late scene that he has no friends, it feels like the most honest thing he’s said.
From the start he has the air of a man who’s seen it all, little of it good. His reaction to a source being gunned down in front of him at Checkpoint Charlie is so restrained as to make it seem routine. He’s called in by Control (Cyril Cusack) who baits him with a suggestion that he retire, or take a desk job. “I’m an operations man,” Leamas snaps. But Control has a plan for him. To orchestrate the arrest and killing of an East German intelligence officer named Mundt (Peter van Eyck), Leamas must convince the enemy that he’s ready to defect to their side.
The next time we see him, he has the disheveled look of someone on the wrong side of a multi-day bender, seemingly down on his luck and seeking work in an employment office. It’s a credit to Burton’s precise performance that it’s unclear at first whether this is an act meant to draw the attention of his mark or a legitimate fall from grace. For Leamas, there might be little difference; the line where he ends and the role begins has vanished. The same could be said for Burton. But of course it is a put on: Leamas takes a position at a reference library that puts him in the orbit of idealistic Communist Party member Nan Perry (Claire Bloom), for whom his growing affection will eventually prove compromising. Before that, though, he gets himself arrested in a drunken altercation and makes contact with representatives from the sinisterly named organization “the Link.” From there, he’s ferried across the Wall for interrogation by Mundt’s right-hand man, Fiedler (Oskar Werner).
Up until this point, Burton’s performance has largely been an internal one. What little variance in emotion Leamas allows is expressed in the narrowing of an eye or tightening of the jaw. He’s an observant man, often still, but there are clockworks turning just below the surface. It’s not until he spars with Fiedler that he seems to come alive, placed in the impossible position of believably refuting something he must convince the enemy is true. There are guns here but words are the most dangerous weapon these men wield. For all Leamas’s confidence, there’s also the overwhelming sense that he wants to prove himself to his adversary.
Burton may have felt similarly: according to Hollis Alpert’s 1986 biography of the actor, Ritt was wary of casting him, fearing that the actor’s recreational habits “lacked a certain discipline” that would carry over into the production. The two butted heads constantly. He also had a difficult relationship with Bloom, with whom he was romantically involved several years prior, a circumstance that lends their intimate scenes together a touching hesitancy. Burton might not have relished such antagonisms on a personal level, but they undoubtedly informed his performance and it benefits from the tension.
Spies, as Leamas tells Nan, are “just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me.” It’s a line that Burton possibly identified with as well, given his working class background and substance abuse struggles. Acting too is a career of expediency: you play the role that’s required then step out of the spotlight. Leamas has the dubious honor of choosing his fate at the end of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Burton, on the other hand, was subject to the fickle whims of fame. But there was a certain conviction in his unwillingness to compromise. If he never quite lived up to the ideas of greatness that others had for him, at least he lived as he wanted.
“The Spy Who Came In From the Cold” is streaming on MGM+ and is available for digital rental or purchase.
