Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages pdf online. Planet Hong Kong, second edition pdf online. The Way Hollywood Tells It pdf online. Poetics of Cinema pdf online. Figures Traced In Light. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema pdf online. Hou Hsiao-hsien: A new video lecture! How Motion Pictures Became the Movies. Constructive editing in Pickpocket : A video essay. Rex Stout: Logomachizing. Lessons with Bazin: Six Paths to a Poetics.
Murder Culture: Adventures in s Suspense. Mad Detective : Doubling Down. Nordisk and the Tableau Aesthetic. Re Discovering Charles Dekeukeleire. Doing Film History. Anatomy of the Action Picture. Film and the Historical Return. Studying Cinema. On the History of Film Style. Second edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages.
First edition, Planet Hong Kong. Berkeley: University of California Press, Textbook written with Kristin Thompson and Jeff Smith. Film History: An Introduction. Textbook written with Kristin Thompson first-named author.
Kristin and some acquaintances have told me that they found parts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy hard to follow. Several critics, while praising the film and doubtless getting more of it than that guy , have warned viewers to pay close attention. Roger Ebert said:. Michael Phillips remarks:. Critics of popular filmmaking claim that our movies cater to simple minds, but we actually find a lot of successful films, from Groundhog Day and Pulp Fiction to Inception , that are complex in intriguing ways.
I argued in The Way Hollywood Tells It that since the s one current of filmmaking has explored narrative strategies that were minor, even unheard-of, options in earlier times. In certain respects older films are more demanding than contemporary ones. Ambitious filmmakers may find new ways to fulfill these conventions, balancing novelty with intelligibility. The filmmakers offer deliberately grainy imagery, enveloped in hazes of rain and cigarette smoke. Scenes are shot with long lenses, rack-focus, and drifting tracking shots.
Zooms and push-ins are interrupted by cutaways. The result is an Altmanesque look, but more disciplined. So I persist: What makes the movie hard to grasp? If we can get a sense of this, we might get to know Tinker Tailor more intimately, while also producing some ideas about how mainstream films work generally.
To attempt an answer, I have to go into detail. In the tradecraft jargon of blogging: There are spoilers ahead. The action starts long after Control has died and his old staff, including George Smiley, has retired. Jim is shot and Control is cast out. Since Hopcraft and director John Irwin had hours at their disposal, the scenes could stretch and breathe, and they retain the somewhat chunky, modular quality of the novel.
Straughan explains :. The structure of the novel was broken into pieces. Some long sequences would remain intact — Peter Guillam stealing the files from the Circus, for example — but in other cases we would take a line or event from one place in the narrative and move it elsewhere, shifting the fragments around endlessly until it felt right. The goal was to create a new version of the narrative which would bear a close family resemblance to the source material, but have its own cinematic personality.
The really difficult part was not fitting the plot into two hours but doing it without losing the tone; to give the film the same autumnal, melancholy pace, and to give the script air and silence.
In keeping with current norms of storytelling, this scene is replayed at crucial points, each time giving us a bit more information relevant to the scenes of testimony around it. To spare time for the pace, the air, and the silences the filmmakers want to include, they had to be more concise in their presentation of plot. When we view a mosaic we can step back to see how the composition blends all the fragments.
But we have to experience a movie bit by bit. A film, we might say, is a moving mosaic, and we are usually standing very close to it. Just as important, a mosaic, made out of gaps, leaves it to us to grasp how the parts fit together—to make our mind jump the gaps. How does Tinker Tailor fit the pieces together?
In general, the film adheres to common conventions of modern storytelling but then subtracts one or two layers of redundancy. The little gaps created make the film seem roundabout today, when rather linear and explicit narration is the norm. Start with a simple case. Like many modern spy films, Tinker Tailor initiates a shift to another locale by a long-shot framing, often from on high. Compare the parallel shot from Tinker Tailor. Earlier instances are more laconic. Least explicit of all are the shots picking out the Circus in London.
So the convention of the exterior establishing shot is respected but made a little less redundant. Another film might have started with Smiley and followed him from his office into the briefing room. And even Control could have been more clearly identified. Just as truculent is the process by which Lacon is led to summon Smiley. First Lacon gets a warning call from the field agent Ricki Tarr.
So far, so conventional. But Tomas Alfredson has staged things so that Tarr is seen at a distance, turned from us, and blocked by a phone booth. Director Tomas Alfredson. Top credits Director Tomas Alfredson.
See more at IMDbPro. Trailer Domestic Trailer. UK Trailer. Trailer 1. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Clip Featurette UK Premiere. Photos Top cast Edit. John Hurt Control as Control. Arthur Nightingale Bryant as Bryant. Tomas Alfredson. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. It transpires that Control believed one of four senior figures in the service was in fact a Russian Agent, a mole, and the Hungary operation was an attempt to identify which of them it was.
George Smiley Gary Oldman had been forced into retirement by the departure of Control, but is asked by a senior government figure to investigate a story told to him by rogue Agent Ricky Tarr Tom Hardy , that there was a mole. Smiley considers that the failure of the Hungary operation and the continuing success of Operation Witchcraft an apparent source of significant Soviet Intelligence confirms this, and takes up the task of finding him.
How do you find an enemy who is hidden right before your eyes? Did you know Edit. Goofs In one of the flashbacks to the Christmas party, presumably before Control resigns in , a "Lenin Santa" has everyone sing along to a recording of the Soviet National Anthem. The version that is played is the version - the original words fell out of favor after Stalin's death in and the anthem was played without words until the new version in Quotes George Smiley : I want to talk about loyalty, Toby.
Crazy credits The closing credits slowly shift from the right side of the screen to the left and then back to the right, no doubt to symbolize the heart of the story: a double agent who 'changes sides'. It depicts a country wearing its decline on its sleeve. Our contemporary age would never admit to as much and indeed it did not in the film version, where everything was carefully stylised and in the colour scheme of a 70s sitcom. You also get to watch something that is slow and often silent, and all the more powerful for that.
A spy story is a succession of masks. Those moments worked as Irvin hoped, and form the centre of Tinker, Tailor. They are like the extended interrogations in Line of Duty, except the tension is more drawn out and there are more gaps the viewer is encouraged to fill. Those interrogations would not have been remotely as effective, however, had they not featured one of the greatest acting performances ever delivered on the small screen.
Sir Alec Guinness , it was suggested at the time, was able to play Smiley because he was rolling in Star Wars money. That turned out to be a smart move and allowed Guinness some latitude in selecting his next roles.
According to Irvin, however, that did not mean he leapt at the prospect of Tinker, Tailor. Requiring more time and patience, however, was Guinness himself.
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