Here's ten selections that IMHO lead the pack of spy stories.  The challenge with this particular list will be to avoid the subcategory of James Bond movies.  Let's see if I can do it...

 

SEBASTIAN (Dirk Bogarde, Susannah York 1968) -

   Just as Casablanca can have espionage aspects but be a different kind of story (that specifically follows the refugee predicaments), this film is a story of a fictional but in some ways realistic cryptography group in Carnaby-Street-mode London (that specifically follows light interpersonal situations).  John Gielgud plays the Home Secretary and Lilli Palmer plays a senior coder, both with more verve than the parts seemed to demand.  Reportedly Bogarde hated his central role, but I suspect that the director took advantage of this to get an effective angle on portraying a tormented department director in difficult times.  Yet to be released in any form as far as I'm aware; there's a delightful romantic score from Jerry Goldsmith.

 

ICE STATION ZEBRA (Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan 1968) -

   From the MacLean novel, the tale follows a US sub to the polar ice pack area on a mission to grab a Soviet photo satellite before the Russians get to the recovery site first.  As other reviewers have covered this one adequately, I'll just mention that McGoohan's presence as the British agent has provided the possibility that this mission would have been the last for his Secret Agent character, therefore possibly the one just prior to "No. 6" having landed in "The Village".

 

NORTH BY NORTHWEST (Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint 1959) -

   Often mentioned in other categories, this one deserves a place here due to the clear cold-war context.  James Mason is delicious as the elegantly smarmy Philip Van Damm, and the action is placed at one point in a spectacular modernistic residence supposedly atop Mount Rushmore (there are numerous web articles on this triumph of matte painting and set-design trickery).  Critics have stoked a cottage industry in theories as to what this multi-leveled film is supposed to mean.

 

NINOTCHKA (Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas 1939) -

   Well, more of a commissar movie than a spy movie but again, you have a perspective on the cold war background that gives rise to the spy category.  And to have multiple perspectives on the Russian characters (the serious Garbo and Bela Lugosi roles contrasted with the comic Bujlianoff, Iranoff and Kopalski roles) helps to clarify the social/political conflict with the West.  Rare to find comic entries in this genre, unless you got really, really comedic and included such as THE PRESIDENT'S ANALYST, which flirts with surrealism.

 

SUDDENLY! (Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden 1954) -

   There's a lowbrow, hired killer level to the spy biz that this film helps frame.  I forget if it's the mob or an enemy government who hires the hit, but Sinatra's character doesn't give a hoot, which is the point.  Achieves the Noir effect of a low budget rising to higher art.

 

THE THIRTY -NINE STEPS (Robert Donat, Peggy Ashcroft 1935) -

   Sort of a spy version of the Maltese Falcon, at least from the perspective of fast tempo plus thick detail.  Most prints of this I've seen are old and I hope there's been a good DVD release of it (I think that one is but don't know how good the transfer was).  In its treatment of mental suggestion, it struck me as having resembled the influential Hammer film SO LONG AT THE FAIR, as well as...

 

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury 1962) - 

   It's fun to pick out the Rat Pack trivia in it (Frank's pal Jilly Rizzo is a bartender and acquits himself well for a nonpro actor) but the real gem is the tight screenplay that benefits from one of the finest performances Sinatra ever delivered.  Arising largely from topical events like the Pueblo spy ship incident, the story concerns issues of torture and in the term of the day, "brainwashing", and serves up a movie-within-a-movie that amounts to a secular version of a zombie film, without the voodoo and substituting modern horrors.  Which brings us to

 

THE IPCRESS FILE (Michael Caine, Sue Lloyd 1965) - 

   From a Len Deighton novel comes the tale of agent Harry Palmer, a character who, aided and abetted by the gritty context built by Deighton and the screenplay, approaches the spy game much like a Mickey Spillane detective who's used to the street.  This is a change from, say, 70's Bond (the Monte Carlo approach) or NORTH BY NORTHWEST's Roger Thornhill (the Babe In The Woods approach); a spy of this form would hew to what might be called the Professional approach, essentiallhy a detective on a risky international level.  There's also a topical awareness of a known problem within the British secret services of the time, the issue of the mole - and Palmer has to figure out which one of his micromanaging bosses it is.  There was a sequel, FUNERAL IN BERLIN.

 

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (Richard Burton, Claire Bloom 1964) -

   Although the bummer mood undercuts awareness of the larger issues I see at work in this historical period, this film is probably the one most cited for containing the realism that most spy films lack.  Operative Alec Leamas, involved in a plot to catch a double agent, loses track of who's doubling up on whom.  A masterpiece of black-and-white cinematography and a tortured, brilliant performance from Burton.

 

ENEMY OF THE STATE (Will Smith, Gene Hackman 1998) -

   An action-adventure romp which often switches from portrayals of high-tech to low-tech spy methods and back again, it's the familiar problem of possible rogue government agencies in the service of an agenda, but there's a twist.  The Roger Thornhill-style innocent is a labor lawyer (Will Smith) working a case that accuses the small but expert Pintero mob.  When the out-of-control government goons lay siege to Smith in hopes that he'll give up accidentally-discovered evidence regarding them, Smith intentionally mixes up the evidence tape with unrelated Pintero case evidence that the mob wants.  If Smith's labor lawyer character can pit both groups against each other, he can expose both and avoid getting killed by either - but only if a retired spy named "Brill" (Hackman) agrees to help him identify the AWOL government guys using resources inside their own organization.

 

And a very underhanded and doublecrossing addition to the list, in keeping with the genre ---

 

Honorable Mention:

DR. NO (Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Jack Lord 1962) -

   Just had to put in a good word for this film, which I think shows a different Bond than almost all of the screen versions of the Fleming books, one that's somewhat more true to the tales and to the actual business of trying to spy and stay alive.

 

 

[4/19/2009]