The Ipcress File

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

There were spy stories on film before the early 1960’s, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock, which leaned toward the seedy side of a secret agent’s life. However, after the James Bond franchise started, the impression then became what a glamorous life spies had, bordering on superhero status. John le Carre’s stories changed the direction back to the grim view, and in 1965 his The Spy Who Came in from the Cold appeared on screen and so did The Ipcress File. The latter, produced by Harry Saltzman, a producer behind many James Bond flicks, presented an anti-hero as the focus of the story, but kept some of the Bond humor. It also jump-started the career of Michael Caine, the first leading man to wear non-dashing eyeglasses.

The movie’s plot centers on the inability of several top British to continue their work. The latest one is named Dr. Radcliffe (Aubrey Richards). He is kidnapped and his bodyguard is killed during the abduction, which happens on a train (trains are good places for intrigue. Think of North by Northwest, Murder on the Orient Express, even the Bond film, Frome Russia with Love). The secret agent boss is the condescending Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman), who recruits Harry Palmer (Caine) to replace the dead agent. Our first view of Harry is when a loud alarm clock rings, like an alert sounding, waking him. We see blurred vision through his myopic eyes which becomes clear after he puts on the eyeglasses. The shot suggests how reality can be distorted by deceptive people until the perception of them becomes clear.

The musical score is adept at mimicking the feeling of something mysterious that ends in climatic notes suggesting revelation. Think of Henry Mancini’s work in Experiment in Terror and Charade.

Harry lives a modest life except for the surprising fact that he is a gourmet who enjoys a cup of freshly ground coffee made in a French press which hints at his special nature which contrasts with his boring current assignment. He occupies a sleazy stakeout room where he reports boring details of his observations. It is quite a contrast to the exotic locales and adrenalin-pumped Bond or Matt Helm adventures. Harry’s wit appears early when his relief shows up and the man expresses disdain for their boss. Harry says he must do some “wiping” because the tape is “still running.”

The first meeting with Colonel Ross is in a shadowy room, which reflects the covert dealings of these operatives. Those shadows persist throughout the film. As IMDb notes, many camera views appear through half-open doors, over shoulders, or through windows or screens to suggest people are spying on others. In this first scene with Ross the camera is aimed upwards. As IMDb notes, it makes the viewers feel as if they are crouching, looking at things from below. That lurking perspective may be to place the audience in the positions of spies themselves, which, of course, is the feeling Hitchcock conveys in his films that stress the audience’s voyeurism.

Ross’s condescending nature is evident as he immediately chastises Harry for not being secretive enough when he doesn’t close the door as he enters. Harry’s wages are pitiful even for the time, and since he is transferring to a promotion, Ross says he will get him a pittance more. Harry says, in a quietly sarcastic way, that he can now get that “infrared grille” he wanted. The squabbling over wages would never appear in a Bond movie, and the conversation grounds the story in what concerns everyday people. Ross says he is transferring Harry to a spot that can make better use of his talents. Later, we see how telling that remark is. The caustic Ross says that Harry’s new boss, Major Dalby (Nigel Greene), does not have Ross’s “sense of humor.” Harry wittily says, “Yes sir. I will miss that sir.”

The interchange between Ross and Dalby conveys much with action and words. Ross thuds his umbrella and an attaché case on Dalby’s desk, implying he’s upset with Dalby’s work. When the Major says he hopes Ross isn’t suggesting that his section was negligent in Dr. Radcliffe’s disappearance, Ross’s response of “There’s no question of that,” can be taken two ways, which fits in with the secretive nature of their work. He adds menace to his conversation when he threatens that if they don’t get Radcliffe back, their superiors may shut Dalby’s office down. He notes that Harry is a bit “insubordinate” but a good man. Ross downplays that aspect of Harry as we see for his own purposes, which, of course, are hidden here.

When Harry meets Dalby for the first time, he again forgets to shut the door. Could that fact suggest that Harry is more transparent and not as devious as his superiors? Ross’s superior attitude is more subtle, but Dalby’s manner is blunt, harshly threatening Harry if he doesn’t toe the line. He reads from Harry’s personnel file, which labels him, “Insubordinate, insolent. A trickster. Perhaps with criminal tendencies.” Dalby admits that the “last quality may be useful.” What does that say about the fine line between the lawful and the unlawful? Dalby makes sure that Harry understands that he reports to Dalby first, not Ross. Other than the fact that Dalby is his immediate superior, why this rule? Is he being secretive within his own organization, or does he suspect Ross of being a traitor?

Instead of the exotic devices that Q supplies Bond, Palmer just gets a different gun and observes some film footage with other agents of the likely man who has the power to kidnap Radcliffe and sell him to the highest bidder. The assignment is to track down the person, Grantby, known as Bluejay (Frank Gatliff), a deceptively benign name, and his second-in-command, Housemartin (Oliver MacGreevy), and let them know the British government wants to buy the scientist back. At the briefing, Harry develops a friendship with Jock Carswell (Gordon Jackson).

The grumpy Alice (Frida Bamford), with a cigarette dangling from her lips which reinforces her sour disposition, is a sort of anti-Moneypenny employee, not lovely or fun. She instead is a bureaucrat, doling out restrictions and forms. Dalby wants his operatives to fill out a field report every time they make an inquiry. It’s not Harry’s style, so instead of getting bogged down in the numerous leads that Dalby issues (deliberate procrastination?), Harry uses a source at Scotland Yard to find Bluejay who showed up at the same place three times for long enough to get parking tickets. It implies that the man could have been doing some business at the location. (The gray, rainy weather is another attempt to de-romanticize the work).

After acquiring Bluejay’s car license number, Harry stakes out the place where the car shows up. Housemartin appears to put more change in the parking meter, and that allows the astute Harry to follow the man into a science museum library. The studious setting contrasts with the intrigue that transpires, although the science part fits what’s happening to the “brain drain” that England is experiencing. After making contact with Bluejay, the man gives Harry a phone number to call later. Harry’s intelligence is on display as he immediately goes to a phone booth and discovers that the number is invalid. When he tries to stop Bluejay outside, he gets into a fight with Housemartin, who escapes and drives his boss away. The camera films the fight through a car window, suggesting the way one spies on others.

On his way back to his place with his foodie goodies, Harry is clever enough to notice the light on in his flat. He has his gun out and the camera gives us a covert shot through a keyhole in keeping with the spy story. Fellow agent Jean Courtney (Sue Lloyed) is there, holding Harry’s automatic pistol. She notes it’s forbidden to use it, and Harry’s sharp response is that his mother gave it to him for Christmas. He quickly realizes that she is on the job, and she admits that Dalby sent her to assess Harry as a new member of the team (which turns out to be a lie). However, it again shows the suspicious nature of the profession. He asks Jean to put on Mozart as he prepares a fine meal, which points to Harry’s refined tastes despite his otherwise unsavory existence. Jean confirms Harry’s “criminal tendencies” by noting while in the military Harry was illegally exploiting the Germans for profit and was caught. Instead of serving a two-year prison sentence, the intelligence service offered a difficult-to-decline stint as a spy. Here, you either go to jail or work in a job for the government. The story does not offer good alternatives.

Harry’s connections note that Housemartin was arrested, but somebody impersonating Harry and Jock pretended to interrogate the man and killed him. Duplicity and murder are part of the goings on here. Housemartin was in possession of electrical equipment in a suitcase, which the killers took with them. Housemartin was apprehended at an abandoned factory. Harry lies (in this profession it obviously comes in handy he realizes) about his authority on the phone and gets a team to join him at the factory. Dalby shows up and Harry justifies his not following the rules because he thinks the missing scientist is there. Whoever was there cleared out. It seems, suspiciously, like others are always one step ahead of Harry. Harry says that if Radcliffe had been there, he would have been “a hero.” Dalby’s curt response is, “He wasn’t. And you’re not.” There is no larger-than-life super heroism going on here, as in Bond or Marvel films. However, Harry does find a piece of audio tape that did not get destroyed in a stove in the factory. It has “IPCRESS” written on it. When they play the tape all they hear is what sounds like strange, distorted sounds.

Ross appears at the grocery store while Harry buys his food. Ross has trouble navigating his shopping cart among the people there, suggesting that his clandestine life causes him to be out of his element when it comes to the average citizen. He is only there to try and get Harry to photograph the IPCRESS file, and to keep his actions secret from Dalby. He threatens Harry with imprisonment if he doesn’t keep the request private. Dalby didn’t want Harry to report any findings to Ross, and now Ross is acting suspiciously, meeting outside of work, and keeping secrets from Dalby. Harry is caught in the middle of questionable activity by two agents who are supposed to be patriotic government workers. What adds to the duplicity is Harry thinks Jean is working for Ross, and she thinks he is still working for Ross. It doesn’t stop them from becoming intimate despite their suspicions.

Dalby has made contact with Bluejay and they meet at an outdoor band concert to discuss the exchange of cash for Radcliffe. Interestingly, Dalby brings Harry with him, which does not seem necessary. The subsequent rendezvous is at a dark underground garage, which fits the secret activity occurring. Both sides carry automatic weapons as cash is counted while a doctor checks out the sedated Radcliffe. The transaction goes smoothly until Harry sees someone lurking in the shadows and opens fire. Dalby discovers Harry has killed an American agent, who was tailing Bluejay. Again, we do not have a flawless protagonist, and the death indicates the danger of a hidden agenda.

Harry becomes Radcliffe’s bodyguard. The scientist seems physically fine but does not remember anything about his abduction. When he is to give a talk about his area of expertise, he begins to repeat the same words over and over while we hear the sounds that were on the tape Harry discovered. So, we know that he has been brainwashed in a sort of The Manchurian Candidate manner. The scientist appeared healthy on the surface but was defective underneath, adding to the theme of appearances being deceptive.

More devious activity occurs when Harry spots a man smoking a pipe tailing him. Turns out the man is also a CIA agent (Thomas Baptiste) who is suspicious of Harry’s killing of one of his comrades. He says he will continue to follow him and if he concludes that Harry is crooked, he will kill him. These men operate outside the law. Dalby and Ross meet, and Dalby said he assigned Harry the task of exacting repayment from Bluejay for the selling of “damaged goods.” Ross believes that Radcliffe fits the pattern of many other scientists who no longer participate in scientific research. Both Dalby and Ross are cold emotionally as they decide to let Harry suffer his fate if the CIA agent decides to kill him.

The pipe-smoking CIA agent sees Harry talking to Bluejay, which makes Harry seem like he is conspiring with a kidnapper. What is on the surface in this film is not what it seems. At the office, Jock has been doing research, and he found something that discusses “Induction of Psychoneurosis by Conditioned Reflex Under Stress.” He prompts Harry to realize that IPCRESS is an acronym for this type of devious mental manipulation that the scientists have experienced.

The next scene finds Jock shot to death while driving Harry’s agency-issued car. Harry tells Jean that he believes the American agent thought it was Harry in the car and shot Jock. Maybe or maybe not, but in any case we have more false appearances. Jean suggests more hiding when she invites Harry to stay at her place for safety purposes. When Harry goes to his place to gather his belongings, it is obviously dark inside, until Harry turns on the light which reveals a deadly reality. The American agent lies dead on the floor. In Hitchcock fashion, someone is falsely setting Harry up as a guilty person.

Back at the office Harry finds that the IPCRESS file is missing. He calls Dalby to meet in person. He doesn’t trust talking on the phone because he knows that things have degenerated to the point that his world is under attack. When he meets Dalby he says Ross probably stole the file because he wanted him to microfilm it. Dalby says he will take care of the body in the apartment, but he will not protect Harry because he is too “hot.” The spy world exists in this film in the underbelly of society where it is callous and perilous.

Since Dalby told Harry to disappear, he plans on taking a train (not a safe place in these films as we have seen). After he leaves Jean’s apartment she calls Ross. We wonder now if even the woman he has become close to is a false ally. Another shot through a window shows a hand clearing the view of Harry on the platform. Danger seems to be lurking behind every supposedly safe corner.

Dalby tells Ross about the dead American agent in Harry’s flat. Ross says that there is a high casualty rate in Dalby’s department, to which Dalby says, “I wonder why?” Again, the sinister acts seem to anticipate Harry’s every move and the implication behind Dalby’s words is that he suspects Ross is behind the nasty business.

As suspected, Harry is abducted from the train. He is rendered unconscious, and when he wakes he finds himself in a cell. He has not been the only victim there because there are scratches on the wall, which suggests that his fate is not a positive one. He pries loose a metal clip from his cot and adds scratches to the wall which indicate he is there for several days. A captor looks through yet another peep hole, adding to the spy motif. Harry experiences cold. He has little food and drink, as he can’t touch the overheated cup in a revolving opening which tempts and then removes sustenance.

Grantby (Bleujay) is there saying they are in his home country of Albania, but at this point, can one trust anything someone says? Harry doesn’t have his glasses, and we see images through his eyes, and the blurring shows a distorted reality.

They don’t let Harry sleep and subject him to the loud, disorienting sound found on the IPCRESS tape. He experiences pulsing videos on all four walls in a room where he is bound in a chair. The purpose is to break his resistance so he will suffer the same fate as the scientists. After the bombarding sounds and images, lulling colors and sounds follow. Bluejay’s hypnotic voice tells Harry to forget about the IPCRESS file, and even his own name. The sense of one’s own identity is at risk in this totalitarian space.

Harry is clever and distracts the conditioning on him by using pain by rubbing his wrist against the leather restraints. They put padding on the restraints, but Harry uses the metal clip he secretly holds in his hand to create pain, an act of deception of his own. However, he can’t maintain his resistance and drops the bloody piece of metal in the conditioning room. Bluejay says when a voice says, “Now listen to me. Listen to me,” he is to obey that voice. Bluejay tries to set up Harry as the fall guy who killed agents and stole the IPCRESS file to be sold to his country’s enemies. Bluejay orders Harry not to remember any of this programming until he hears the voice.

Harry escapes, and in keeping with all the false information in the story, he is in London, not Albania. He calls Dalby. We find that it is Dalby who is the traitor as he has Bluejay with him. For Ross’s sake, Dalby had to pretend (more deception) that he was trying to find out about the problem with the scientists. Dalby tells Harry the triggering words and orders him to call Ross and tell him to meet him at the warehouse where he had been held, which has been abandoned by the IPCRESS team. (There is a red lampshade next to Dalby in this scene. As IMDb points out, Dalby is associated with red in many scenes. Other examples are: in the park, the military band members wear red outfits and play "The Thin Red Line", which Dalby likes; his sports car has a red interior; he stands next to firefighting equipment in the last scene, and there is a red bucket near him when we see he is the villain. Along with his sinister mustache, the film paints him as a devil figure, and red can associate him with the Soviet Union in existence at the time).

 Bluejay said he would have liked more sessions with Harry. So, when Dalby shows up at the warehouse, Harry is not conditioned enough to blindly follow his programming. He suspects Dalby as much as Ross. We see him now spying through an open door while he was the one being observed in the past, indicating that the situation has shifted. It is interesting that he tells Dalby to stand under the light. Yes, he wants to see him, but it also implies wanting to bring the truth out in the open. When Ross shows up, he disarms him and says he knows one of them is a traitor. He discovers that Jean was working for Ross, not Dalby, as we already know.

Dalby then uses the words, “Now listen to me,” and tells him to shoot Ross. Harry wavers, slams his hand against some movie projector equipment (interesting that this shot, in a movie, shows how film can be used for dangerous purposes). This act which breaks the trance, and he then shoots and kills Dalby as the man pulls out a gun. Harry is angry at Ross for using his insubordinate nature to reveal Dalby’s double-agent status. Ross’s response is, “That’s what you’re paid for.” Considering what a small sum that is, we see what little compensation Harry, the working-class spy, must settle for despite the perilous nature of the job.