A Dandy In Aspic (1968) Anyone who's dropped in on BQ more than a few times well knows what a rabid James Bond fanboy we are.....why, we even hold a special place in our heart for all those blatant Bondian imitations of variable quality, especially those super-cheesy Italian-International Co-Production knockoffs.......
But we realized we've hardly touched upon the less well known group of films that ran parallel to the Bonds, existing as their own separate alternate universe of spies and espionage.
We speak, of course, of the grim, serious and mostly depressing spy films.......modeled on the novels of John LeCarre and depicting espionage as a dirty, grimy, depressing business and secret agents as morally bankrupt, desolate civil servants at the very end of their ropes.
In other words, more like real life, so you know you're not going to see the superhero wham-bams of a James Bond, Derek Flint or Matt Helm.......
Don't look for tuxedos, baccarat tables and vodka martinis here........in the 'Serious Spy' genre, everyone's on their way to hell in a hurry. And by the end of these films, they usually get there, no matter whose side they're spying for...(or against.)
So here we have the 'Dandy' of the title, Alexander Eberlin (Laurence Harvey), an imperious, uppercrust, snottty MI6 agent who's been given quite the thankless mission by his handlers.
He's been tasked with hunting down and killing an elusive Russian agent who's expertly bumping off one British agent after another.....including, while poolside no doubt, nailing one poor sucker in mid-dive off a high board.
Big problem for Eberlin: He in fact is a long time Russian double agent/assassin who's been doing all the hits.......so essentially, he's just been told to fly to Berlin and.....uh.....well, kill himself.
One tough job for a guy who lately yearns to ditch spycraft and return home to Russia, huh? But off to Berlin he goes, accompanied by an aggressive, intense British colleague (Tom Courtenay) who already personally despises Eberlin
This is the point where you know that things to not bode well for anybody.
Unlike the spectacle and fun of the Bondian universe, in the world of the 'Serious Spy' genre, it's the intricacies and twists of the plot that hold your interest. This film duly trots them out and the top notch cast holds your attention, even if you know there's nothing but doom ahead for these characters.
Hard to tell if we're supposed to sympathize with Laurence Harvey's Eberlin......Harvey, who took over the film's direction when Anthony Mann passed away, mostly excelled as cold, remote and snobbish characters......here, there's hardly any difference between Eberlin and the brainwashed Raymond Shaw of "The Manchurian Candidate"
A few other pleasures do pop up here and there........that great old veteran character actor Lionel Stander has a jolly old time as a grinning, duplicitous Russian agent, the always cadaverous Vernon Dobtcheff as a sinister East German border officer and that rising young starlet Mia Farrow flits about the entire film for reasons we don't entirely understand since she and Harvey look like they arrived from two different planets.
Throw in the arresting main titles, which feature dangling, faceless marionettes (yeh, we get it, a metaphor for spies) and you've got an odd, vaguely unsettling but very watchable entry in the Serious Spy canon.
Anyone who's at all interested in this off-the-beaten-track genre or wants to sample one of these films should give this one a try 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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