We know that James Bond will vanquish the villain and get the girl, but we want to see how he does it. The more unreal the film, the more it depends on extrinsic elements-an Aston-Martin, an industrial laser-for thrills. In this realistic setting, author Len Deighton places his fantastic jewel of a plot, and then polishes it with humor, blood, sex, and a little more bureaucratic realism.Įvery thriller must, to some extent, be unreal. He shops with the masses in a supermarket, and he worries about the raise he's expecting. He works in what seems to be everyday London, its streets, its parks and warehouses, and he lives alone in a sloppy bachelor apartment. But he gets better results when he does things his own way. Bored with his daily surveillance assignments, Harry amuses himself by playing practical jokes on his fellow spies and by lightheartedly ignoring his instructions. Harry involuntarily chose spying he had been court-martialled for insubordination and faced either military prison or the secret service.
Until he pulls an automatic out of the crumpled bedclothes. The opening credits show him waking up, groping for his glasses, fishing around for his creased clothing, making coffee, and running an electric shaver over his face-all the morning rituals of a dull desk worker. The gimmick is that the hero, Harry Palmer, comes on as a sleepy-eyed clod. All the events necessary for a good thriller occur with surprising regularity: a snappy, bone-crunching fight, an amusing seduction, and a sadistically satisfying torture. Most of the familiar spy-story elements are there: an inexplicable but obviously treacherous plot against the national welfare of jolly old England, an equally enigmatic and treacherous villain, and a beautiful girl.
The Ipcress File does not try to outdo Goldfinger, just to undercut it, by slightly changing the rules of the game. This is the first of the anti-Ian Fleming films, and if the others are as enjoyable, they may drive James Bond completely out of business.
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