Blu Ray: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold | reviews, news & interviews Blu Ray: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Blu Ray: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Superb Cold War spy thriller as good as ever
by Mark KidelSunday, 16 May 2021
Claire Bloom (as Nan), Richard Burton (as Leamas)
Martin Ritt’s 1965 classy screen adaptation of John Le Carré’s bestseller “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” is an antidote to the full-colour hi-jinx of the Bond franchise that ruled over the spy movie genre in the 1960s.
Martin Ritt’s 1965 classy screen adaptation of John Le Carré’s bestseller “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” is an antidote to the full-colour hi-jinx of the Bond franchise that ruled over the spy movie genre in the 1960s.
10 great British thrillers of the 1970s
As I Start Counting lands on Blu-ray, we run through 10 more edge-of-your-seat gems of British film of the 1970s.
22 April 2021
I Start Counting (1970)
The common conception of British cinema in the 1970s is that it was in terminal decline. Deprived of investment in the face of dwindling box-office returns, producers resorted to peddling period horrors, softcore romps and sitcom spin-offs to stay afloat. Yet, the decade also witnessed a mini thriller boom that exploited the BBFC’s relaxation of censorship to bring a new psychological authenticity and depth to such suspense-filled stories as David Greene’s I Start Counting (1970).
Originally divided by an interval, the second act brings only tragedy for Tevye, who faces the loss of his home to tsarist persecution and his two daughters to a new world. Indeed, it is Hodel’s farewell to “Far from the Home I Love” that moved Topol most. “She doesn’t speak, she just sings the song, and he understands every single feeling that she has. And he knows he won’t see her anymore.”
As the film’s emotional fulcrum, Topol’s portrayal of the pious milkman
has led people to ask about his real persona. “He doesn’t act, but lives the part and you can actually see his heart breaking,” says his youngest daughter, Adi, who played Chava with him at the Palladium in 1994.
hen the film adaptation of
Fiddler on the Roof opened, revered critic Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and said director Norman Jewison “has made as good a film as can be made from the material”. Ebert, now deceased, thought the storyline was “quite simply boring”, which decried the work of its original author, Sholem Aleichem, and raised doubts about Ebert’s Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
With global acclaim from all other reviewers, three Oscars, multiple nominations (including Best Actor for Chaim Topol) and a cumulative $83.3 million at the box office, the enduring appeal of this movie is irrefutable.
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