THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)

On a train, we see Radcliffe, a well-regarded British scientist, kidnapped and his security man killed. British intelligence is concerned about a recent "brain drain" in which several top scientists have vanished or left their jobs, and Radcliffe seems to be the latest. He also may have had some top secret information with him when he was taken. Ross, head of military intelligence, pulls cocky agent Harry Palmer (Michael Caine, pictured) off of routine surveillance duty to work under Major Dalby (Nigel Green). The pressure is on as Dalby's unit might be shut down if they can't crack this case. There's a suspect known as Bluejay who deals in state secrets, and during a raid on a warehouse where Radcliffe has been kept, Palmer finds an audio tape with scratchy, unintelligible noises marked “IPCRESS.” Eventually, Bluejay agrees to hand Radcliffe over for a cash ransom, but Radcliffe is obviously damaged in some way, and when he starts to give a lecture, we hear the noises from the tape and he collapses. It's not quite a spoiler to note that IPCRESS stands for "Induction of Psychoneurosis by Conditioned Reflex under Stress," and soon Palmer himself is caught and, in a psychedelically-shot scene not too different looking from the 2001 Stargate sequence, tortured using the IPCRESS system. Like Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Palmer is made to react subconsciously to a signal when he will be triggered to become an assassin.

This is a solid entry in the 1960s spy genre, not as serious as LeCarre’s THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and not as silly as some of the James Bond movies could get. The overall tone is light and Palmer is witty but not a clown. Caine is perfect in the role (he played two more times in FUNERAL IN BERLIN and BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN) as is Nigel Green as Dalby (who knows more than he tells). Gordon Jackson as a fellow agent of Palmer's is also quite good. Sue Lloyd is the underused love interest, and Guy Doleman nicely underplays the role of Ross, Palmer's old boss, who pops up again near the end. Director Sidney Furie uses lots of off-kilter and disorienting camera angles—some viewers find this distracting, but I thought it gave a nice flavor to what would otherwise have been fairly bland visual set-ups. For example, there is a fisticuffs scene shot through the glass in a phone booth, obscuring much of the action. There is some dry humor that enlivens the proceedings; when the stiff, business-like Ross sends Palmer to Dalby, he says in a deadpan fashion that Dalby "doesn’t have my sense of humor." There is apparently a recent TV series based on this book, which I haven’t seen, but I can recommend this version to spy movie fans. [TCM]