In late 1965, just as pop culture on both sides of the Atlantic was poised on the verge of an explosion of day-glo color and paisley-infused psychedelic whimsy, Martin Ritt and Richard Burton teamed up with a solid cast of British and German actors to deliver a drab, sobering wash of grey (mostly of the darker charcoal shaded variety) to remind everyone just how grim and uptight things were in the shadowy battlegrounds of the Cold War. Like all the best war movies (and by best, I mean those that strive to give a reality-based account of just how much of a losing proposition it is for those who fight it out on the front lines), The Spy Who Came In From The Cold disabuses viewers of just about any tidy, naive notions they might bring with them into a story about "good guy" British spies infiltrating and disrupting their evil counterparts on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In it, Richard Burton plays Alec Leamas, a mid-level field agent who's clearly on the tattered end of a career that must have been fairly successful at some point because he's been at it for most of his adult life following his service in World War II. Pulled out of his assignment in Berlin after a logistical foul-up results in the death of a would-be defector carrying some prized secrets, Leamas is poised for a shabby crash landing - burned out, numb to the consequences and implications of his work, resigned to finding whatever answers to life's big questions remain unanswered at the bottom of a whiskey tumbler. Those questions that have been resolved (at least in his mind) haven't given him any discernible sense of purpose, or confidence that the powers that be will reward him favorably for his efforts.
But of course, Leamas is hardly a unique case - even though we don't really spend much time getting to know his peers, it's fair to assume that MI6 headquarters has had plenty of experience figuring out how to exploit shattered husks of once-reliable agents like him. When we meet Leamas' boss, a man known to him and to us only as "Control," a scheme has already been hatched to use his propensity toward drunkenness and his undisguisable cynicism as bait, to lure the Communist-affiliated spies lurking around London into viewing him as a potential defector, so that he can be taken into their confidence, infiltrate their ranks and sow the seeds of misinformation that will give the Brits a momentary victory and a tactical advantage in a long-running, slow burning conflict unlikely to actually settle anything - but we'll be damned if we allow them to gain the upper hand in whatever this fight was supposed to be about anyway.
The mechanics of the double, triple and quadruple crosses that take place over the course of the story are quite deftly executed, once comprehended, and I won't spell them out here. but don't be too put off if all the dots don't connect for you right away. This isn't the kind of cartoonish mass-audience spectacle that drops its plot points with loud bright indicators that make it obvious enough to forgive any lapse of concentration. A first time viewer is advised to pay close attention, put away the devices and ignore any other distractions, and don't watch The Spy Who Came In From The Cold while sleepy, because you're way too likely to miss something important. And this is a film best appreciated by being as fully absorbed into its dismal, sunless world as possible.
Not that director Martin Ritt necessarily intends for us to enjoy the experience - he's more interested in gradually pulling us in and ensnaring us with a sense of dreadful futility, as we come to see the world through the same bleary, disillusioned lens that Leamas wears. That jaundiced perspective isn't presented as noble, per se, just realistic. Burton's powerful embodiment of Leamas, despite his trajectory of inevitable doom, allows us neither an unambiguous embrace of the standard capitalist framing - "we're the good guys, the defenders of freedom who are simply reacting to communist aggression and their relentless determination to undermine our way of life" - nor an idealistic adoption of peacenik idealism that seeks to live in respectful harmony with our socialist and proletariat friends in the East. That latter view is epitomized by Leamas' anti-nuke activist girlfriend Nan, played with intelligent pathos by Burton's former lover Claire Bloom. Nan's earnest innocence is mocked at times by Leamas, though he certainly cares for her and is willing to indulge her naivete, but Ritt does nothing to directly undermine her point of view. He only illustrates how likely it is that she and others who think like her will end up being exploited by the cruelly grinding gears of an impersonal intelligence bureaucracy that systematically shuts out any serious consideration of interpersonal ethics and morality... the sort of thing that we flatter ourselves to consider among the higher achievements and prevailing values that steer the leaders of our modern civilization.
Sad to say that for many in the audience even today, such a simplistic take still stands, regarding the conflict between East and West that followed hard on the signing of treaties that ended World War II, and the manner in which geopolitical concerns have evolved since the end of the Cold War on up to this era's War on Terror, or whatever the hell the USA and its allies are trying to achieve in our current batch of global entanglements. So even though Berlin is now an open city firmly aligned with the capitalist powers and the menace of the Soviet bloc and its allies is now more or less a relic of the past, I still see a lot of positive educational value in this film. By portraying the international espionage game as the essentially mundane, prosaic but wickedly deceptive and manipulative enterprise that it is, consuming the lives of its operatives just as readily as it does its intended targets, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold continues to deliver a cold, bracing slap of truth, whether we like it or not.