THE DEADLY AFFAIR

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This 1967 Sidney Lumet film is an adaptation of John le Carré's first novel, 'Call for the Dead', which features George Smiley who would of course reappear in many later le Carré novels, although for legal reasons his character name here is Charles Dobbs.

Dobbs is played by James Mason, which is decent enough casting.  Less satisfactory is Swedish actress Harriet Andersson as his wife Ann, given that she is over twenty years younger than Mason.  

Which is not to say that Andersson doesn't give a good performance.  In fact all of the cast are up to the assignment.

Simone Signoret is memorable in the two speaking scenes she gets, and I liked both Harry Andrews and Kenneth Haigh as Dobbs' two sidekicks as he tries to get to the bottom of the mystery of the apparent suicide of a Foreign Office mandarin.  

Roy Kinnear gives a nicely judged performance as a small-time criminal caught up unwittingly in the espionage goings-on.

Freddie Young used this film to pioneer a new technique which produces a muted colour palette, which I liked given that I have an aversion to the garish colours one sometimes finds in films of the 1950s and 1960s.

The plot is satisfactorily labyrinthine without being over the top.  Setting a climactic scene during a theatrical production of 'Edward II' is a nice touch.

But this picture doesn't do anything very suspenseful or innovative within the genre; in fact it is all a bit predictable, including the identity of the main villain.  

Nevertheless it proved to be a satisfactory way to pass a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.  

RATING: ✓ Cheers

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