Who does not love a rattling, thrilling spy film? Since time immemorial, spies, either as seductive as Mata Hari and Lorraine Broughton, as dashing and debonair as Ashenden and James Bond, as disillusioned and suicidal as Alec Leamas and Maurice Castle, as cold-blooded as George Smiley, vengeful and taciturn as Jason Bourne or even helplessly out of depth as Richard Hannay, Jim Wormold and Harry Pendel, have held us in thrall of their talents, pathos or sheer befuddled confusion. Thought up in these distinct shades by the eclectic writers and brought to cinematic life with films equally diverse, these are men and even women who have sneaked into tight corners and ugly situations and have, more or less, succeeded in saving the day from some annihilation, nuclear or not.
This list is an earnest yet eventually naive effort on my part to narrow down to the essential English-language spy films that everybody should watch. That means that I am leaving out classics like Fritz Lang's Spione and our very own Ramanand Sagar's Aankhen. And it also means that I am leaving out many a Tom Clancy adaptation, a lot of James Bond films (with particular vehemence for those starring Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan) and possibly the whole Mission: Impossible franchise. But the ten films that do make it to this highly biased list are worthier than all these films put together. See for yourself.
10- The IPCRESS File (1965)
Dir- Sidney J. Furie
Yes, it departs drastically from the more complex Len Deighton novel but it is hard to deny the influential status of this sardonic mid-1960s counterpart to the sultry sexiness of James Bond romping around in the world's hotspots. Legendary iconoclast Michael Caine, then a blonde and long-legged urban prankster, with a twinkle of mischief in his eyes, plays Harry Palmer, an army veteran with a dubious past, who is recruited by the British intelligence to investigate the random disappearance of a leading scientist. The Cold War tensions are firmly in place as Palmer uncovers a dastardly conspiracy in the works but what makes Furie's film most memorable is how it also equates the stifling, mediocre bureaucracy of intelligence work, especially in the MI6 and in the 1960s, as something of an archetype villain itself. Palmer's sometimes hilarious and mostly infuriating struggles with paperwork, tedious formalities and rival spymasters proves, quite compellingly with a sharp satirical touch, that there was more to espionage than just cool gadgets and casual sex.
9- Casino Royale (2006)
Dir- Martin Campbell
With Casino Royale, the James Bond franchise discovered its roots again, as Martin Campbell and writers Neil Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis brought the flights of jet-pack fancy, ejector seat excitement and relentless gimmickry down to the basics of Ian Fleming's classy yet more viscerally thrilling paperbacks. 007 comes across as more nihilistic, apprehensive and even directly blunt, far from the wise-cracking, Martini-swilling debonair that we always knew him in the more or less enjoyable films. Moreover, the action sequences are more immediate and credible and after the fireworks settle down in the first half, the film admirably lets a simmering and stealthy game of baccarat and brains unfold with even more malicious twists awaiting us in the devastating climax. Yes, this is how those Fleming novels used to feel like, especially with a hauntingly world-weary Daniel Craig playing Bond like an ice-cold killer who thaws only when love breaks his heart.
8- The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Dir- Paul Greengrass
Leaving out the redundant rehash of Jason Bourne, one can then say safely that the three absolutely incendiary films modelled on Robert Ludlum's dense and globe-trotting stories of an amnesiac CIA agent gone rogue are a touchstone for the modern espionage genre, with each outing improving the previous one by leaps and bounds. Paul Greengrass' turbo-charged third film unfolds like a breathless game of cat and mouse with some of the most suspenseful and sweltering scenes of digital espionage and hard and dirty action ever committed to the screen. Moreover, in this film, Bourne (played with flawless, almost relentless determination by Matt Damon) nurses a particularly personal grudge against his cold-blooded spymasters even as they hunt for him in vain. His vengeful quest for the truth takes him from the peak-hour bustle of Waterloo Station in London to the sweaty stealth of Tangiers in brutal, almost visceral action scenes that refuse to be dislodged from their rightful place of glory.
7- Notorious (1946)
Dir- Alfred Hitchcock
The passage of time has only cemented Notorious' status as not only a meticulously plotted and coolly Machiavellian toxic romantic thriller but also one of the first films to prove that the world of espionage is a minefield that also cripples love and desire. Even the fragile, immaculately tailored narrative is something of a subversive marvel, even coming from the always fastidious Hitchcock: there is no room for idyll even in the beginning as Cary Grant's smarmy-mouthed spook Devlin hires, quite maliciously, the beautiful but taciturn Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) to seduce her way into the secrets of her erstwhile admirer Sebastian (Claude Rains) and his covert group of Nazis in Brazil. What ensues is a tightrope walk of brittle tension, seething sexual jealousy and obsessive matriarchy as Hitchcock, his brilliantly matched players and writer Ben Hecht unfold a dazzling game of cloak and dagger that devastates as much as it thrills. Not to forget the master's cheeky wink to the American censors.
6- Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Dir- Kathryn Bigelow
As much as Kathryn Bigelow excels in portraying rugged yet charismatic action heroes and soldiers, it is when she turned the most talked-about manhunt of the 21st century into a deeply personal tale of a woman going against all odds to pull it off that she delivered a really affecting and thrilling masterpiece. As Maya, an intriguingly unsmiling and determined CIA analyst charged with hunting down Osama Bin Laden, Jessica Chastain chips in a quietly devastating and always rousing performance, as she leads and even makes way for various strongmen and field agents to stake their morality and mortality in their relentless chase across Middle East. Was it ethical, one cannot help but question, when, at the end of it all, a team of SEALs sneak their way into a compound in the dark of the night? You decide. What is undeniable is that this coolly calibrated espionage thriller hits the most sensational beats, blending fact, fiction and a heady feminist flavour to a superb effect.
5- North By Northwest (1959)
Dir- Alfred Hitchcock
There are many films in Hitchcock's oeuvre that contend for crystallised clarity of vision and flawless, sleek perfection but none other than his gleefully tongue-in-cheek North By Northwest ticks the boxes with as much relish as it does. As we follow. for the umpteenth delightful time, the suavely dressed advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant, never more uproarious or self-depreciatingly brilliant) on a wild hare hunt whilst being pursued by murderous spies who mistake him for an infiltrator himself, we realise, with equally pleasant familiarity, that there is not a gag or one-liner in Ernest Lehmann's rattling and ribald screenplay that does not amuse richly, there is not a set-piece that does not drips with Hitch's trademark sweltering tension and even the throwaway scenes, like a drunk Thornhill mumbling on a telephone, are legendary. Then, also consider its timely prescience. Without even the slightest stray reference to the Cold War, this is one of the rare films that captured the paranoid atmosphere brilliantly.
4- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Dir- Tomas Alfredson
Adapting John Le Carre's chilly magnum opus, about a protractedly bureaucratic but brilliantly brooding hunt for a mole in the top brass of British intelligence, to the screen was always going to be as monstrously difficult. But Tomas Alfredson's elegant and even elegiac version, written deftly by Bridget O' Connor and Peter Straughan, is not only a slinkier, moodier piece but also even more cold-blooded and seething in its cynicism. For one thing, Gary Oldman's George Smiley, with no disrespect for Sir Alec Guinness' more closely hewn performance, is a leaner and meaner man with a heart of ice just thawing at the edges. He also leads a fantastic ensemble of veterans and the cream of Brit Pack talent, including John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, all cast compellingly in pitch-perfect portrayals. Yes, the narrative dilutes some of the sordid, shadowy grit and warm flashes of Istanbul and Budapest allow for some exotica. But even these vital divergences make for gripping cloak and dagger cinema.
3- Our Man In Havana (1959)
Dir- Sir Carol Reed
Devious, even delusional British intelligence old-timers, Machiavellian police inspectors, harried and heartbroken double agents and awkward and misguided CIA spooks, they all feature without warning in the entire body of work of author extraordinaire Graham Greene. It is however in his hilariously prophetic and unexpectedly profound satire, set in a sultry Havana at the fag end of Batista's tyrannical rule, and in the ardent screen adaptation helmed by Sir Carol Reed, that we get an endlessly entertaining caper. Sir Alec Guinness is a delightful hoot as Jim Wormold, a non-plussed vacuum cleaner salesman and also the titular agent of Her Majesty's Service. Enjoying, bemusedly, his new-found profession by cooking up many a tall tale to keep the old wigs in London happy, poor Wormold is nevertheless soon plunged into the not-so-hilarious reality of the game of espionage. Told with both Reed's deftly light-hearted touch and Greene's screenplay brimming with a vivid cinematic flavour and rich, tongue-in-cheek humour, this is a timeless comedy as enticing and snazzy as a glass of daiquiri.
2- From Russia With Love (1963)
Dir- Terence Young
How easy it is forget that before the James Bond film franchise became an old-fashioned albeit enjoyable pastiche of every action movie fad of the 1970s and 80s, there were those classics, featuring a pitch-perfect Sean Connery, which actually cared to be faithful to Ian Fleming's considerably more intricately plotted novels. The fact that Fleming's own work has been lambasted unfairly for being too dated is unfortunate; without the overt eroticism and misogyny, the novels and the films are the first of the escapist thrillers that feel so commonplace today. Particularly influential is this classy and unapologetically saucy second film which even today feels the most credible of the series, as crackling and urgent as a breathless Ambler paperback. The Cold War atmosphere is terse; Istanbul, Venice and a not-so-romantic ride on the Orient Express lend a heady flavour of European intrigue and the lean, almost gritty action scenes are more about Bond trying to come in from the cold rather than blowing up a base. Just don't get distracted with those plunging necklines.
1- The 39 Steps (1935)
Dir- Alfred Hitchcock
How wonderfully and radically different do Alfred Hitchcock's early British thrillers look in contrast with his more iconoclast but pompous Hollywood whodunnits and blazing potboilers; while the latter blend mental masturbation with subversive chills, the former are more enjoyably looser, more deliciously witty and thrilling in their lean economy and rattling place. Of them all, his ingeniously filmed version of John Buchan's ground-breaking pursuit thriller remains to be the harbinger of every single pulse-pounding action and espionage film that followed. Starting in a West End flat where a suave woman turns out to be not quite what she seems to be and hurtling our quick-footed and unlikely British national hero Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) on a train to the wilds of the Scottish Highlands, The 39 Steps has lost none of its infectious pluck, its impeccably wry and smooth comic timing or its relentless spirit of peril and adventure. Hitch would race ahead on the same path with both Foreign Correspondent and North By Northwest but this film, simply about an everyday countryman running across the country to protect its secrets, is as breathless and brilliant as it was more than 8 decades ago.
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