Underrated British Spy Thriller on BluRay

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

Pretty much everyone is familiar with the James Bond films as a series of light-hearted spy adventures, and is aware it started with Sean Connery in films like “Dr. No,” “From Russia With Love,” and “Goldfinger.” Most people have likely seen at least photos if not clips or the entire films from those or other 1960s Bond pictures. If not, many are now on BluRay in painstakingly restored editions that look as if they were shot yesterday.

Spy movies have again become popular with recent franchises like the Mission Impossible films and the Bourne series, all serious-minded, taut, techno-thrillers. At the height of the Cold War, the Bond films were all satiric, tongue-in-cheek and often over-the-top comic sendups of heroes and villains and technology (and remained so until Daniel Craig’s recent more serious-minded Bourne-like reimagining of the iconic spy), and inspired many more spy comedies like James Coburn’s “Our Man Flint” pictures, and TV series like “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “Get Smart,” and others.

Fewer people are probably familiar with the Harry Palmer spy film series starring Michael Caine, which was also produced by Harry Saltzman, the man behind the first three Bond movies. Whereas Connery’s Bond was a suave, sophisticate who could fight, kiss, or talk his way out of just about anything, a fantasy hero for teenage boys, Caine’s Harry Palmer was his antiheroic antithesis. He was an average guy, an army sergeant with a shady past who found himself trying to redeem his reputation as a secret agent in Berlin up against much more disturbingly believable villains.

The first and arguably best of three films featuring Caine’s Harry Palmer was “The Ipcress File” (1965). While there is a definite irreverent and sarcastic attitude to Palmer, he’s not the glib punster of Connery’s Bond. And although he also has a taste for women (without Bond’s impeccable sense of style), Caine’s character is very much a realist who must rely more on his wits than on fancy gadgets or superhuman fighting abilities to survive his various ordeals and uncover what’s really going on. The cast is uniformly excellent.

“The Ipcress File” was aptly billed in its original advertising as “the thinking man’s ‘Goldfinger’,” and won three British Academy awards when it came out, including Best Film, Best Art Direction, and Best Cinematography. The cinematography is indeed striking, with artful lighting and clever camera angles almost to the point that it looks like a indie artfilm rather than a studio-made spy thriller. It’s available in a nice BluRay edition from Britain’s ITV DVD that is region-free, so it will play in all BluRay players.

Since it was shot in the “Techniscope” widescreen format, which uses half-height frames on the film, it naturally had more visible film grain, especially in the many low-light scenes that needed a faster emulsion. This grain comes through intact in the fine high-definition transfer to BluRay, and is most noticeable during the first half-hour or so of the film, as the later portions apparently used finer-grain film stock.

The soundtrack has been remixed well to Dolby Digital 5.1, but there’s also a 2.0 track available. Unfortunately the only extras are the British theatrical trailer and a brief stills gallery. It’s a bargain-priced disc, however, costing in the $15-20 range plus shipping from England (which typically takes about a week).

“THE IPCRESS FILE” on BluRay: Movie: A / Video: A- / Audio: A / Extras: D+

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