I have been wanting to see this movie for a long time, for no better reason, I think, than I came across it while looking through the collection at the library and liked the picture on the sleeve. I have a casual acquaintance with John Le Carre’s work and the film adaptations of it, but I would hasten to point out that the books I’ve read (at least two) are not the ones that there are movies for, whether or not I’ve seen them.

This is the earliest adaptation of one of his books. There is a certain overlying tension in his spy books (and film adaptations of them) of the objectives of the government and the morality and the needs of the agents who are required to fulfill them, which comes to the forefront in this film. As Alec Leamas, Richard Burton gives a masterful performance of a man split by desire and duty. A former chief of British agents operating in East Germany, an operation which seems to be running out of agents, when given the choice between retirement and a final mission, he chooses the mission; he is told by his superior to sell false information to the Soviets in order to frame an East German officer, who is responsible for the murder of many of Leamas’s own agents. In order to come to the attention of the Soviets who are recruiting double agents, Leamas must appear to leave his employment, get a civilian job, and in general, create a disaffected persona that would be convincingly swayed into betraying his country and his former friends for a good deal of cash.

That’s straightforward enough, but nothing is so simple in Le Carre’s universe. Leamas acquires a young, idealist communist for a girlfriend. The ground rules he sets with his superior for agreeing to the mission are completely disregarded. The mission he’s sent on proves to be on false pretenses. He realizes, far too late for action, that he’s been kept in the dark about a vital secret for most of his career, and that it is his ignorance which makes him valuable as a British pawn in what is almost a farce… or a Greek tragedy.

There is irony everywhere, as if that were the ammunition of the cold war. Although the title says he came in from the cold, that was only a pretense…. And of course, the man on the front lines of this slow battle of wills with the Soviets finds himself involved with and in love with a communist, lovely librarian Nan Perry, played with confidence and conviction by Claire Bloom.

What happens because of his mission, and because of their involvement with each other shakes the faith of both of them in the institutions they had trusted themselves to. It is a fascinating study both of the characters and of the world of international espionage. There is no gloss here, no glamour, there isn’t even any color, it is dark and practical and dirty. Just as, one assumes, espionage is in reality.