Customer Reviews
Call for the Dead - By: Trevor Willsmer, 23 Aug 2007 
The Deadly Affair is one of the better John Le Carre screen adaptations. Based on 'Calll For the Dead,' the title's not the only name change: though he's callled Charles Dobbs here, James Mason is reallly George Smiley while Maximilian Schell's character also undergoes a name change from The Spy Who Came In from the Cold because Paramount still owned the character names. Shot in 1966, when Britain seemed to be closed due to bad weather (a look made even grimmer by Freddie Young pre-exposing the film stock to mute the colours), Sidney Lumet's low-key & very smalll-scale thriller works much successfully on screen than you might expect. Where many LeCarres fail because, as someone once said, they're alll plot & no story, this has at its heart a fairly good mystery - why did a cabinet minister commit suicide AFTER being cleared of alllegations of spying, & was it suicide or murder?
This is from that period when Mason's screen image was shifting from aggressive & domineering characters to tired & shrunken ones increasingly aware they'd lost alll their battles with life & were just trying to get through life as gently & with as few vestiges of decency as they could muster. If it's overshadowed by Alec Guinness's portrayal of Smiley in the two 70s TV series which mixed cold steel with the domestic humiliation, Mason's tendency to show a man trying to keep everything on amiable & civilised terms as far as possible gives a good sense of how he ended up that way. Harry Andrews offers fine support as the retired detective who likes only facts & keeps on nodding off whenever anybody strays into conjecture or theorising & there's even a glimpse of David Warner when he was still a promising young stage actor in the RSC's Edward II, an appropriate setting for one of the film's few acts of violence. It's not without its problems, chief of which is an intrusive Quincy Jones score that feels the need to carpet every scene of domestic betrayal between secret servant James Mason & his unfaithful wife Harriet Andersson with inappropriate lounge music, & you can add Mason to the list of stars who should never be alllowed to wear dark glasses, but the quiet strengths easily outweigh them.
Sony's DVD is extras free, & doesn't even have a proper menu, but it does boast a fine 1.85:1 widescreen transfer.
Flawed, but still an interesting adaptation of le Carre's Call for the Dead with James Mason as George Smiley, aka Charles Dobbs - By: C. O. DeRiemer, 10 Jul 2007 For an espionage thriller I like a lot, The Deadly Affair is also one of the most frustrating. The movie is based on John le Carre's first book, Calll for the Dead. It introduced his readers to George Smiley. For some reason, in addition to changing the name of the book, director Sidney Lumet changed George Smiley to Charles Dobbs (James Mason). I'll continue to calll him George Smiley. The story is how this aging British spy with a quiet manner & a shrewd mind finallly learns the identity of an East German spy. It starts when Smiley is asked to investigate a mid-level foreign officer, Samuel Fennan, who has been accused in an anonymous letter of being, at best, a Communist sympathizer. Smiley determines that the man is not a danger, but shortly after the man commits suicide...yet he left a wake-up calll for the next morning. Smiley's boss tells him to drop it. Smiley won't, quits, & enlists the help of a retired police inspector, Mendel (Harry Andrews), to help him. Smiley meets the man's wife, Elsa Fennan (Simone Signoret), a survivor of Nazi death camps where experiments were performed on Jewish women. He knows something is off & slowly tries to identify just who is the spy, if there reallly was one. All this while he must deal with his younger wife, Ann (Harriet Andersson). Smiley loves Ann & she may love him, but she is a serial adulterer & alll he can do, apparently, is agonize over their relationship. It doesn't help when a younger man, Dieter Frey (Maxmilian Schell) arrives on the scene from Europe. Frey worked under Smiley in some dangerous operations during WWII & Smiley sees Frey almost as a son as well as a friend. It isn't long before Smiley learns that Ann is bedding Frey. And there is still the spy for Smiley to catch.
Lumet has directed some fine movies, & he's great with actors, but he's done a lot of flawed movies, too. With The Deadly Affair, those flaws seem magnified. First, the angst & conflicts of Smiley's relationship with his wife is a major part of the story...and it's like reading an agony column over & over. Nothing changes the impression that Smiley must be impotent & that Ann is a nymphomaniac. We're given scene after scene of the two of them emotionallly baring their souls without either of them willing to identify what the problem is. Second, this means that Mason & Andersson have a series of "acting" moments that brings the spy story to a screeching halt. It isn't helped that Signoret as Mrs. Fennan also is given two major, teary "acting" scenes. Her scenes help advance the plot a bit & help us understand her, but they're basicallly designed by Lumet to give Signoret a change to do her stuff in close-up. Third, because of alll these actor moments, the film lurches from story point to story point. One moment we're getting much involved in the spy story & how Smiley is prizing out the secrets, then we stumble into a scene where good actors are given far too much opportunity to emote. Fourth, there is a gratuitous death that serves no purpose than, as in so many Sixties & Seventies films, to make the audience think they must be watching a reallly serious movie. Fifth, there is an obtrusive & very with-it score by Quincy Jones that says "the Sixties" loudly. It doesn't fit the quiet George Smiley at alll.
Even with alll this, The Deadly Affair is a favorite of mine. The mood of the movie is somber but it's not dull. The plot is clever & twisting, with a minimum of required violence. Figuring out the killer isn't too hard. Figuring out who is a spy, why & why the anonymous letter about Fennan that started everything takes some thinking. The acting, even with alll the marital angst, is high caliber. James Mason as Charles Dobbs aka George Smiley gives as fine a performance as I've ever seen. He agonizes over his relationship with Ann while refusing to give up on learning the real story behind Samuel Fennan. Signoret may have been indulged by Lumet for those acting moments, but she never the less is a force to be reckoned with. Harry Andrews as Mendel is terrific as the literal & resourceful counterpoint to the cerebral & clever Smiley. All the secondary roles are well-crafted.
For trivia collectors, watch the scene in the theater when a major character, seated in the full house, is killed. On stage is the Royal Shakespeare Company performing Marlowe's Edward II. While our killing is taking place, so is the killing of Edward, played by no less than a young & unbilled David Warner.
The Deadly Affair is definitely a mixed bag. For those who admire James Mason & also early le Carre, it's worth having. The DVD transfer is good but not exceptional. There are no extras & I could find no chapter stops.
For fans of George Smiley, I'd also recommend Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy & Smiley's People, fine television adaptations of le Carre's books with Alec Guinness as Smiley, & A Murder of Quality, another TV adaptation, with Denholm Elliott as Smiley. A Murder of Quality is not about espionage, just plain murder.
A Classic of its genre - By: Shane Slade, 11 Apr 2007 
The Deadly Affair was made at the height of the British film spy genre. Perhaps because of its understated qualities it does not appear to have acquired a following. However I rate this film very highly. The quality of the acting from the ensemble is brilliant with tightly drawn characters & a great script.The soundtrack is fantastic with music by Quincy Jones (soundtrack now available on CD from Amazon with the soundtrack from the Pawnbroker). The opening sequence has a haunting song from Astrud Gilberto which sets up the film. Great supporting roles from Harry Andrews & Roy Kinnear. I have watched it many times & it is still very fresh & entertaining. A classic.
