Now Listen to Me...

 

The Ipcress File at Sixty

One of the most iconic films in the espionage genre turns sixty this week: The Ipcress File was released on 18 March 1965, its dour urban setting in complete contrast to the prevailing winds then blowing through spy fiction in the cinema and on television. Espionage on the big and small screen was becoming increasingly ironic and camp, but The Ipcress File managed to have its cake and eat it, cashing in on the spy boom whilst striking out in a completely new direction.

John Le Carré had already signalled the beginning of a move towards realism in espionage fiction with his 1961 novel Call For the Dead, and more famously, 1963’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. But neither film had yet been adapted for the cinema.

Len Deighton’s source novel had appeared between Le Carré’s first two works, and he was most likely working on it when Call for the Dead was published. Was he influenced by Le Carré? It’s hard to imagine that he wasn’t, although he later cited as inspiration the story of a neighbour who had spied for Germany during the Second World War, along with Raymond Chandler (for the cynical, first person narrative) and an old Bogart movie, Beat the Devil.

Deighton had been working as a successful book jacket designer, and earned enough from his work to try his hand as a novelist. The Ipcress File was his first attempt at writing and, frankly, you can tell. He later claimed that he wanted the book to be ‘ragged and untidy, as life is’ when in fact it’s ragged and untidy as a badly-edited first draft novel is. On paper, The Ipcress File isn’t far off being a car crash. It’s hard to see what attracted Harry Salzman to it as a potential movie property, aside from the obvious: this was an era when almost any work of spy fiction was bound to attract the attention of filmmakers. Deighton knew exactly what he was doing when he chose to write an espionage novel.

Stylistically, The Ipcress File is pitched somewhere between the hard-boiled detective fiction of Dasheill Hammett and the down-to-earth prosaic spy novels of Le Carré. Bond is clearly an influence too, though you wouldn’t guess it from the film which ditches the novel’s exotic locations (Beirut and the South Pacific). Deighton, a keen historian, fleshes out his text with a plethora of detail, blending fiction and reality. There are (inevitably) name checks for Burgess and Maclean, whose story he co-opts as background for the spy codenamed Jay (the film makes him ‘Bluejay’ in a nod to American audiences), and he provides an accurate description of a nuclear test facility where an experimental neutron bomb is to be exploded (the neutron bomb was bang up to the minute stuff – if you’ll forgive the pun – still in the theoretical stage at the time).

Commentators all point to the supposedly working class background of Deighton’s unnamed protagonist, but in all honesty he doesn’t make that big a deal out of it, and the character drops so many learned cultural references in his narrative that it’s hard to accept him as anything other than a well educated and erudite individual. We see some of this in the film – Palmer is a music lover, gourmet and cook, but he’s no way the kind of clued-up smart arse we meet on paper.

To mark the film’s sixtieth anniversary, I wanted to understand where it diverges from the source novel, which I’d never previously read. In fact, the novel is as unlike the movie as any of Ian Fleming’s Bond books. The screenplay is essentially a stripped down version of ideas from Deighton’s text, which it refashions into a much tighter yet still complex narrative. As written, the novel would have been unfilmable without a huge budget, so the elisions are to some extent understandable, but the text is also quite badly structured, with a long drawn out final section that includes some unbelievably clunky exposition where the narrator explains what’s been happening to his assistant Jean Tonnensen (one suspects this was added at the behest of an editor, Deighton’s having left so many dangling plot points throughout the text).

Here’s a summary of the key differences:

Harry Palmer: any film buff will tell you that the name Harry Palmer was created to serve the movie. In the book, the narrator informs us: “Now my name isn't Harry, but in this business it's hard to remember whether it ever had been.” The character in fact changes his identity during the course of the narrative (for no obvious reason), collecting a whole package of documents and items such as a false passport and a police warrant card. The novel’s protagonist actually assumes control of Dalby’s department in his absence, and is clearly an older, more senior figure than the Harry Palmer we meet on screen. The movie Palmer is seen cooking and shopping, but there are no such scenes in the book. His only encounter with a kitchen is when he watches Jay cooking a lobster.

Location: The film makes a virtue of its London settings, contrasting the gentility of Regents’ Park (favoured by Dalby and Ross) with the grimier backstreets where Palmer lives and works. The novel adopts a similar setting for much of the action, but there are interludes in Beirut (where the kidnapped scientist is retaken by force in an operation involving Dalby and the narrator) and a Pacifc atoll where a bomb test is about to take place. Here, the narrator is framed, arrested as a spy and wakes up in a cell, seemingly somewhere behind the iron curtain.

Supporting Characters: Ross and Dalby and both present in the novel, although their personalities seem to have been switched for the film. On paper, Dalby is quite young, blonde haired and clearly an ex-public school type, while Ross, older, moustached and balding, is more like the uptight military persona of Nigel Green’s Dalby. Palmer’s relationship with Dalby is tense and fractious on screen, whereas in the book the two characters are more like equals with a sparring, slightly jokey relationship. Courtney (Sue Lloyd) is Jean in print, and the relationship between her and ‘Palmer’ is far less obvious; Carswell (Gordon Jackson) is a different character entirely in the text, much older, and a statistician who is trying to find patterns in the records of missing persons. He doesn’t borrow a car and isn’t shot in mistake for ‘Palmer’. The novel’s spymaster Jay becomes Bluejay in the movie, and is given an English-sounding identity (Grantby) where the ‘Jay’ of the novel has an Eastern European name. The dowdy ‘Alice’ on screen is a much younger character in the book.

Action: Most of the iconic scenes in the film were crafted for the screenplay: in the novel, the kidnapping of the scientist is not shown, neither is the handover in the underground car park (Dalby and the narrator ambush his captors on the road in Beirut). Carswell isn’t killed in print (although a similar fate befalls an old friend whom the protagonist calls on after escaping from captivity). The warehouse where the IPCRESS tape is discovered is a domestic residence in the book (and the tape is not labelled). On screen, Palmer is abducted on a train, whereas the novel’s protagonist is arrested at the bomb test location. Most tellingly, there is no brainwashing sequence. The indoctrination techniques described in the book are a far cry from the audio-visual torture Palmer undergoes on screen. In the book, there is no IPCRESS noise, no hypnotic visuals, and no trigger phrase ('now listen to me...')

Following his escape, the action in the novel rather loses its way – the narrator calls on an old friend (who is susequently murdered), before travelling to Dalby’s country cottage where he sees Jay and one of his captors. Jay is followed to London and arrested by Ross: Dalby is later reported to have died in a car accident. The movie’s classic ending, with Dalby and Ross held at gunpoint by Palmer while Dalby orders him to ‘shoot the traitor’ is nowhere to be found. The novel peters out in twenty pages of rather laboured and undramatic exposition. 

In the film, following the warehouse raid, Dalby testily complains to one of the detectives that their tardiness in starting the operation isn’t good enough. Having now read the original Ipcress File, I might make the same observation. There are good ideas present, but the text really needed sharpening and re-editing, quite heavily in my opinion. Deighton starts out well, and the style is sharply laconic, but the plot structure slowly comes apart, and the scenes on the bomb test atoll are, frankly, unnecessary. He’s also not very good at describing action sequences, and one is often left wondering exactly what’s meant to be happening. His narrator, so memorably portrayed on celluloid by Michael Caine, is less of the insubordinate cheery cockney and more of a cynical know-all, who uses jargon without explanation. I wonder whether this was rather in the nature of a self portrait? The book is also the only novel I have ever encountered where passages cut from the text are served up wholesale in an appendix. None of them is really necessary, and in many cases they serve only to let the reader know the extent of Deighton’s arcane knowledge of matters such as the going rate for Indian Hemp or recipes for some clearly fictitious cocktails.

It’s arguable that the reputation of Deighton’s novel relies almost entirely on the film, which improves upon it in almost every conceivable way. The film isn’t entirely without its flaws, though: if anyone can explain to me how Grantby manages to abduct Radcliffe in the opening scene, then immediately kill and dispose of his escort (who is seen only seconds later dumped in a baggage trolley), I’d be glad to hear from them!

Panther's film tie-in edition of The Ipcress File: left, cover, right, inside cover

Old School Shopping

 

There’s an episode of the 1980s sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles in which Richard Briers’ character, the obsessive and slightly neurotic Martin Bryce, has cause to visit his local ironmonger. It’s a properly old school establishment, and his reason for visiting is simple: he wants a single galvanized six-inch nail, which the local DIY store insists in selling in multipacks. Mr. Lazenby, the ironmonger, a frail old man, happily complies with his request.

I had cause to visit just such an establishment myself this past week. Not an ironmonger (I doubt if any still exist) but a hi-fi shop. It’s been in Burton on Trent for as long as I can remember, but, I’ve never had cause to visit it before. It has a properly old school name: The London Wireless Company. Don’t bother looking for it online, you won’t find it. This is retailing as it used to be.

The first thing I noticed when I went inside was a small display case behind the counter, containing replacement cartridges and styli for record decks. I remember seeing them in hi-fi shops way back in the 1970s, but it’s been years since I saw one in situ. The shop sells high end home entertainment, mostly huge televisions, but with a line of what looked to be decent hi-fi equipment. The proprietor (imagine a Toby Jones type) looked entirely at home in his surroundings, emerging from a back room when I entered the shop. There was no one else around. I noticed old carpeting on the floor and an area of vintage wallpaper behind the counter – better and better.

My reason for visiting was simple: I knew the shop undertook repairs (this much, at least, can be gleaned online, although the shop has no website), and I wanted some adjustments made to my Denon record deck, which was playing slightly too fast. It’s the kind of thing that would have annoyed Richard Briers’ character: hearing a song playing in E double flat instead of D major: the platter was rotating at maybe 34rpm. I left it there and about a week later got a phone call to say the deck was ready for collection. The cost was a mere £25 which I found entirely reasonable. The deck now plays perfectly.

I mention all this as an example of what we’re in danger of losing in the blinkered rush to online retailing. Old fashioned personal service. I’m not averse to buying the odd book or CD from Amazon, but given the choice I’d still prefer to get them from a real shop in the physical world. Unfortunately, I appear to be one of a dwindling minority.

There’s a generation now that weren’t alive in the era before online retailing, and their lazy preference for shopping from the sofa has already cost us several high street retailers who you’d have thought would endure forever. At time of writing, the venerable WH Smith high street chain is up for sale and will likely cease to exist in any recognisable form.

Call me old fashioned, but I refuse to pass judgement on any product until I’ve seen it for real. Anything can be made to look impressive in a photograph. I can’t understand people who buy clothes online. You can’t tell anything about a garment from a photograph apart from its appearance. When buying clothes I want to see how well they’ve been put together, feel the texture of the fabric, get a proper appreciation of quality.

Even car retailing is moving increasingly towards an online platform with the likes of Cazoo, where you pick your vehicle from an image on the internet and it is delivered to you on a trailer. Unless and until this is the only means of buying a vehicle, I refuse to go along with it, however good, bad or indifferent the experience. In the past few years, I’ve bought a couple of cars, in the process of which I checked out numerous examples online. Nine times out of ten, when I finally got to see the vehicles for real, there were defects visible that the photos didn’t show: paint swirls, small dents, chips, scuffs and the like.

Back in the 70s and 80s, shopping was a much more interesting experience, because you never knew what you were going to find. You’d go into a record retailer and come across an album you never expected to see. In my case, collecting secondhand books, I was forever discovering caches of unexpected treasures like Giles annuals of impossible vintage. Today, the collector can usually track down all but the rarest and most elusive items online, but it’s not quite the same. I’ve collected old guitars for forty years, and still nothing compares to the moment when, stepping into some musty emporium that’s been in business for decades, you stumbled upon an unbelievable old relic gathering dust high up on some pegboard wall.

I’m not completely anti online as a tool in the collector’s arsenal – it’s enabled me to track down some very interesting and unique artefacts I’d never have found by other means. I just don’t want it to become the default method of going shopping.

It’s easy to see why retailers are participating in this seismic shift towards online: retail premises are costly to build, rent and maintain. Never mind the question of convenience. Banks have largely decided to abandon those customers who still want to use them in person, and in so doing are driving more and more customers into the waiting arms of online scammers. I’ve banked with Barclays since 1983, but our local branch closed for good last year. A few months later, in response to demand from customers, they were obliged to open a ‘pod’ (tent to you and me) in the local shopping mall where you can still deal with a real person (well, they looked real when I walked by but who knows what AI is capable of...)

Forty years ago, when John Esmonde and Bob Larbey were writing Ever Decreasing Circles, the internet did not exist – not in any recognisable form at any rate, and certainly not accessible by anyone other than academics in computing. Back in 1987, the ‘enemy’ was the out of town shopping park, examples of which were springing up on the fringes of just about every average-sized town. Martin Bryce apologises to Mr. Lazenby for using the local DIY superstore instead of his old, independent establishment. The principle, however, is still the same – big corporations sweeping away the smaller, independent retailers. The difference today is that they’re doing it in the virtual world. The ‘High Street’ will soon be as redundant a concept as the ‘muffin man’ was in my childhood.

I’m glad that establishments like The London Wireless Company still exist. Most independent retailers have seen the writing on the wall and have at least some kind of presence online even if they don’t sell their products and services that way. I’d like to think that there will eventually be a backlash against internet retailing, but you can’t change people’s habits that easily and the habit of click and deliver (who wants to collect?) has already become deeply ingrained.

Let’s celebrate the old school while it’s still standing. Next time I’m in the market for hi-fi, The London Wireless Company will be my first port of call. I only hope it’s still there.

Eve of Destruction

 

A Close Encounter with Barry McGuire

The religious studies department at our grammar school occasionally arranged ‘entertainments’ for morning assembly. On one occasion, a Christian music group called Rosetta Stone played in the school hall (‘Big School’ as we called it). I wasn’t into their message, but it was a change from routine, and the extended assembly meant we missed the first lesson of the day. I’ve no idea whatever happened to Rosetta Stone; the name was later appropriated by a goth rock band with no apparent connection to the folkies who visited our school. But another such guest appearance was from a considerably more eminent musician. 

Barry McGuire had scored an international hit in 1965 with his recording of P.F. Sloan’s ‘Eve of Destruction’, earning himself a gold disc in the process. The record had become a hit quite by accident: intended as the B-side to another Sloan composition, it was played on air in error by a DJ and quickly became a surprise hit. McGuire’s growly vocal was only intended a guide track, but the disc took off so quickly it was never re-recorded.

Depending on your point of view, ‘Eve of Destruction’ was either a symbol of everything that was wrong with contemporary youth culture or a crass cash-in on the folk rock/protest boom. Its elevation to number one on the Billboard Hot One Hundred and number three in the UK charts does however, seem to have signalled the end of the folkie protest movement whose initiator, Bob Dylan, had already consigned protest songs to his ‘back pages’.

Back in 1975, I knew none of this, and had never even heard the song ‘Eve of Destruction’. How Barry McGuire came to be playing solo to a hall full of grammar school boys I have no idea. He’d become a born again Christian four years earlier and must have been in Britain spreading the word. I remember the event quite clearly: McGuire, huge and bearded, came on stage weilding a big acoustic 12-string guitar. He seemed to be struggling to tune it, and in the course of his performance managed to break a couple of strings. He was still playing ‘Eve of Destruction’, although many of its lyrical references were now somwhat out of date. 

I doubt if many of us had much idea who McGuire was. ‘Eve of Destruction’ had been subjected to a partial airplay ban by the BBC, who decreed it could not be played on ‘general entertainment programmes’ (although it clocked up a single appearance on Top of the Pops during its time in the top ten). I’d have been more impressed if McGuire had announced that he’d sung the lead vocal on the New Christy Minstrels’ novelty hit ‘Three Wheels on my Wagon’, but unsurprisingly this did not figure in his set of evangelical folk songs.

Clearly, we knew he was famous, because afterwards a crowd of us went up to the stage to get his autograph. I handed him my school fountain pen which he couldn’t get to work, and he signed some random piece of paper I’d found in my pocket, now sadly lost.

I was keeping a diary at the time, but neglected to mention McGuire’s visit. I know we were in the third year at the time, which places it somewhere between autumn ‘74 and summer ‘75, and at a guess I’d say it was more or less exactly fifty years ago almost to the day. I know it to have been before the summer of 1975, because that was when I finally got to hear the original ‘Eve of Destruction’ single, courtesy of Jimmy Savile’s Double Top Ten Show.

Looking back, it seems slightly bizarre to think of this pop icon of the 1960s standing on stage in ‘Big School’ strumming his 12-string guitar. This was a guy who was a contemporary of acts like the Byrds. Members of the legendary ‘Wrecking Crew’, Hal Blaine and Larry Knetchel had played on the single. McGuire got a namecheck in the chorus of the Mamas and the Papas’ single ‘Creeque Alley’ (the band sang backing vocals on his cover of their own hit, ‘California Dreamin’’), and Frank Zappa even cited him as an influence on his Freak Out! album sleeve (was he being sarcastic?)

In the US, ‘Eve of Destruction’ had caused no little controversy. Although decried in hip circles as a sell-out, the song’s lyrics were contentious, with lines like ‘you’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’’ (a reference to the draft registration age of 18). Sloan’s record company had told him the song was unpublishable, hence its demotion to a B-side. Perhaps its problem was that it was too full-on, too determined to cause offence, where other ‘protest singers’ adopted a more subtle approach in getting their message across, through poetry and allegory. Some of Sloan’s lyrics veer very close to parody: 

Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'/ I'm sittin' here just contemplatin'

In production terms, the arrangement ticked all the required folk/protest boxes. The backing is so thin as to be almost inaudible, carried along principally by acoustic guitar, and there are occasional snatches of the obligatory harmonica, lending the whole piece a ‘Dylan-by-nunbers’ vibe. But as an anti-war song released during the Vietnam era, it most definitely touched a nerve. Its references may have dated, but the sentiment isn’t altogether irrelevant today as the governments of the world fulminate over another conflict that shows no signs of ending.

As for Barry McGuire, following the single’s success, he never again made Billboard’s top 40, although he remained active as a singer and performer and is still going today at the age of 89.

Wikipedia’s picture of him (above) coincidentally captures his 1970s appearance and is exactly the way he looked the day he stepped out on stage in Bishop Vesey’s grammar school fifty years ago. I bet it’s even the same 12-string guitar he’s playing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_38SWIIKITE