Director: Sidney J. Furie
Screenplay: Bill Canaway and James Doran, based on the novel The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton
Starring: Michael Caine, Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd
Running Time: 109 minutes
Genre: Thriller
London, 1965: Secret agent Harry Palmer (Caine) is assigned to a section investigating a rash of bizarre resignations and disappearances of top scientists. He soon finds himself embroiled in a murky world of espionage, betrayal and a sinister brainwashing plot.
The Ipcress File was intended to be a more downbeat and realistic alternative to the James Bind franchise and uses several crew members from the Bond films, including producer Harry Saltzman, composer John Barry and production designer Ken Adam. While James Bond was a suave, sophisticated, public school educated, playboy, Harry Palmer is a cynical, bespectacled, working class Londoner, who lives in a bedsit, enjoys cooking and classical music and has a criminal background. The film eschews the glamorous locations for deliberately drab London locations, and lacks the gadgets, set pieces and sex appeal, although Palmer does have a romance with fellow spy Jean Courtney (Lloyd). It depicts the world of spying as basically mired in bureaucracy, with endless red tape, inter-departmental squabbling and office politics, which Bond would never put up with. It is still an entertaining movie, stylishly directed by Furie, who makes good use of unconventional framing and tilted camera angles, invoking a disorientating, skewed world. While Palmer is a more vulnerable lead then Bond, he is still handy with his fists and a gun. Michael Caine became something of a sixties icon with this, his first lead role. In Len Deighton's 1962 source novel, and it's sequels, the lead character (Harry Palmer in the film) is never given a name. Like Harry Palmer in the film, Deighton was an accomplished cook and clippings of cookery articles written by him decorate Palmer's apartment, and in a scene where Palmer prepares a meal, the hands seen in close-up are actually Deighton's.
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