Friday 13 September 2013

The Ipcress File

© Harry Saltzman

L: Deighton supervises Caine (1964)   R: Deighton's cover illustration for On The Road (1956)


1 comment:

  1. I haven't seen "The Ipcress File" since last century, Rob, but I picked up a copy on DVD not so long ago and it's still in its plastic shrink-wrap. I'm savouring it. The Harry Palmer films were produced by Harry Saltzman, the producing partner of Albert Broccoli. Yes, together, these two guys were the Bond producers. Saltzman wanted to do something with a little more realism than the Bond films. And Steven Spielberg have cited this film as having some of the best cinematography of the Sixties. Some of the camera placement is inspired.
    I've never seen "Funeral in Berlin", but I did catch part of "Billion Dollar Brain" on tv one night many years ago. I'm sort of hoping that these films will be released in some kind of boxed-set at some point. Michael Caine once said that there was talk of a new Harry Palmer movie in the Seventies. He was quite keen to do it because he liked the character, but this film never eventuated. Still, if you watch
    "The Fourth Protocol", an early Pierce Brosnan film based on a Frederick Forsyth novel, Michael Caine stars as an MI5 man with some echoes of Harry Palmer.

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