The Human Factor

Only because some of the cast are prominent, first-rate actors, does this film earn even five stars. Without the presence of Robert Morley and Richard Attenborough in major roles - and Derek Jacobi and a couple of others in smaller parts, "The Human Factor" would be a washout. Since it's based on a novel by Graham Greene (which I have not read), one must conclude that the book was a much better read than this story as told and shown in film. In the first place, this is a very minor espionage film. The lead character, Maurice Castle (played by Nicol Williamson), is only a passer of minor information as gratitude for a friend's help in getting his Black wife and her son out of Africa. The friend, Matthew Connolly (played by Tony Vogel) was a Communist organizer in South Africa. So, Castle wasn't a Communist or disgruntled Englishman who wanted to work against or overthrow his country. From the espionage angle, this is more of a story about the "firm," which is the British Secret Service or MI-something. And, it is shown as a loosely disorganized entity with mostly eccentric old-timers in top positions. Morley, especially, plays his part well, and Richard Vernon is very good as Sir John Hargreaves. The other aspect of the film is mostly melodrama involving Castle and his wife, Sarah (played my Iman) and Jacobi's Arthur Davis. Some of the film, in flashback, takes place in Africa, but most is in London. Yet the whole picture has a feel of being filmed on sound stages. It may be the direction or the screenplay or the sets - most likely a combination of them all, but many scenes have the feel of being on stage. I'm not one who can very long stand the constant action and mayhem movies of the 21st century, but this film is just way too slow, long and drawn out, with so little substance. Especially after some intriguing and lively espionage films, such as the 1979 TV movie, "Philby, Burgess and Maclean," this film is tame and nearly maudlin as an espionage tale. It would be wrong to call it a thriller. The only thing that keeps it from being a complete bore is wondering how it turns out for Castle and his family. The ending helps it earn the fifth star. It's not likely that many folks today will be able to sit through this full film. Even aficionados of spy films won't find much in this movie.

Masterly British understatement, sang froid in the chilly corridors of secret service during the cold war. Superlative acting, as expected from a brilliant cast, does not fail to deliver the complexities and twists of a Graham Greene novel, equally well scripted by Tom Stoppard. The plot is not clever for cleverness sake but full of insight, dealing with many sensitive issues, personal and political. Yet the cast portray all this quite naturally, as people caught up in their professional and emotional dilemmas. Sound boring? Well it is entitled The Human Factor. Perhaps the ever shrinking attention span of the modern "culture" factory can account for this excellent movie's inexplicable disappearance. It's as pertinent and poignant now as ever. Must confess I saw it for the first time only a week ago on the telly.

The failings of the film have been noted elsewhere - flat photography, poor lighting, some wooden acting (mainly Iman, but its her first role I believe and her poor acting skills did not bother me) and a general lack of raw emotion or activity. However if you are in the mood for a slow-paced spy talkie (with appalling 70's decor and some amazingly bad wallpaper), this is one for you. As usual, Robert Morley runs away with the film in its most colourful role - no matter how much you admire Nicol Willianson as the lead actor, the whole point of his character is that he appears restrained, bloodless and essentially dull. As with any GG novel, the morality is ambiguous with audience sympathies not lying where one would usually expect. And best of all, there is no happy ending. Much like with On the Waterfront for Elia Kazan, this film is probably an attempt to explain how sometimes people (with particular reference here presumably to Kim Philby, who was GG's friend and pro-Soviet double agent) undertake activities that others find difficult to understand.

Maurice Castle (Nicol Williamson) is a bland mid-level bureaucrat in British intelligence. The only notable fact about him is his African wife Sarah (Iman). His superiors suspect a leak in the firm and decide to quietly eliminate the mole to avoid any publicity. Castle's office mate Arthur Davis (Derek Jacobi) becomes the main target of investigation. Otto Preminger directs this realistic espionage thriller from a Graham Greene novel with many veteran British actors. With such great pedigree, I expected a great classic but this is definitely second tier level. It does get better in the second half. The first half is a slow slough. Maurice's blandness works against the film during that first half. In fact, he's a side character in his own movie. The production value is limited. This looks more like a TV movie. Preminger is really struggling even considering the budget. The filming is not imaginative and very static. It's almost a throwback to the early black and white movies. The only salvation is the Graham Greene writing which has a sense of realism which is very intriguing. This is a little disappointing.

The Synopsis: Nicol Williamson stars as a middle-aged employee of the British secret service. His house is in some fancy suburb of London seemingly near the countryside, and he bicycles(!) to work. He lives with his much younger wife, who is black. The whole plot turns on the suspicion of a double agent somewhere in the firm, and finding out who it is. It is at first suspected to be Williamson's friend, a rather sweet, guileless man played by Derek Jacobi. The plot thickens from there. Sounds like Le Carre, doesn't it? Actually it is very like Le Carre, but its also much less dense and easier to follow than Le Carre's work (which i mostly adore, but am rarely able to finish a novel by him and tell anyone anything about what happened). There are many commendable things about this film, but it is finally too flawed to be at all satisfying. At its best, it has a dreary Antonioniesque nausea to it. However, Graham Greene was, I think, a notch or two below Le Carre, talent-wise, in terms of spy novels and sheer dramatic power, anyway, and what drama there is is further undermined by an increasing reliance on the non-existent acting skills of the model Iman, as Williamson's wife, who unfortunately becomes a focal point of the drama more and more as the film goes on. The film's conclusion would probably be a pretty lame cutting-off point no matter who was playing the role, though. Although the cinematography is far from Preminger's most beautiful (see Bunny Lake is Missing), his camera movement still has that superbly American sense of drama, intelligence and inquisitiveness that was his trademark. Another late-Preminger trademark, from what i gather, was putting older actors in weird sexual situations, and here we get to see Robert Morley at a strip club. It's quite funny to see his patented Robert Morley leer in this context. Morley plays one of Williamson's bosses, a rather evil man, finally, who ruthlessly exterminates at least one person who he thinks is the mole *** SPOILER ALERT SORT OF *** but who later turns out not to be.

I watched this because it was on a BBC TV channel and so would not contain any adverts; it was also conveniently short. I expected nothing and all the way through I got nothing. I might even have dozed a little, but fortunately had it on record. I thought the lead actor was too tall and his wife was too thin, and neither of them, or anyone else in the film tried to act: very much as though they were on the stage. I vaguely recognized some of the actors and I read somewhere it was directed by Preminger, who had made some of the truly outstanding films of my youth. It ended and I went to bed, just a little puzzled. And then I couldn't sleep. I gradually came to realize I had been fooled. The cunning bastard had sneaked an amazing missile under my indolence and wrecked my life for a while. If you don't want to be grabbed and tormented, then don't watch this film.

Otto Preminger's final film is actually really good (a surprise given his track record during his last decade of film-making). A British agent sacrifices everything and commits treason as a way of thanking the communists who helped get his wife and stepson out of South Africa. Preminger's direction has never been so lean (stark might be a better word), shooting virtually every scene from the floor up giving a real pessimistic feel to the film. The sparse use of music is another big plus. Nicol Williamson is the spy and he's efficient...his non-personality and lack of charisma are perfect for his everyman role. Iman is his wife and while clearly not an actress, her uneasiness lends itself nicely to her fish-out-of-water role. Preminger fills the supporting cast with a slew of classy Brits...Richard Attenborough as a security chief, Ann Todd as Williamson's bitchy mother, Robert Morley as a not so bright "doctor," and John Gielgud in a very brief role. Derek Jacobi is quite good as one of Williamson's peers, who finds himself taking the heat for a lot of Williamson's misdeeds. Tom Stoppard's script has a couple of choice scenes and some very funny dialog.

I am not sure what attracted actors of the calibre of Nicol Williamson, Derek Jacobi and Richard Attenborough to star in this film apart from I suppose, that it was directed by Otto Preminger. It is a very low key film with no action and no suspense. The story is about a double agent working inside the British Secret Service and attempts by Richard Attenborough and others to find out who it is. Nicol Williamson's character Maurice who works for British Intelligence, is very polite and well mannered throughout proceedings and shows little, if any emotion to events. Richard Attenborough as Col. Daintry appears easily bullied by everyone, even his ex-wife who throws a wobbly at him after he breaks one of her ceramic owls. Poor old Derek Jacobi is bumped off in error by Robert Morley who plays Dr.Percival because he and the boss of the Secret Service think that he is the double agent. A huge collection of British character actors keep popping up throughout the film including John Gielgud who makes a brief appearance at the start of the movie but is not seen again. I thought the opening music was strange with two Spanish guitars twanging away conjuring up visions of haciendas and bullfights. Overall, I thought this a very odd movie but am glad to have watched it.

I must confess that this was the first Otto Preminger movie I've seen, so I cannot comment it as an Otto Preminger movie, but rather just a movie among others. I'm very much a fan of both cold war spy movies and 70/80s Great Britain, so the elements were in place for me to enjoy this. I had never heard of this (I'm yet to go through Preminger's movies) and I quite randomly picked it from the online service as it seemed pretty interesting. And it was interesting. Very subtle and talkative, I have to say I really really liked it. The story itself wasn't too exciting, but interesting nonetheless. It's about the secret service and an apparent leak of information - possibility of double agents and so on. Very gripping, yet quite slow paced - no action. I just watched le Carre film "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and they are quite alike in style, altho I have to say I enjoyed this more. Even if it's not necessarily as well made, this wasn't quite as heavy-handed. The acting is great for the most part. Nicol Williamson was a name I hadn't heard of before, but his presence really made this movie. Very understated and brilliant character, just like anyones neighbor or work colleague. There's a weak link too unfortunately and that's Iman, she's horribly wooden and unnatural in her acting most of the time. I'm dropping one point because of sloppy cinematography too - lighting in particular and a few shots that look really staged. I'm not sure why some scenes were so horribly set up, the lights almost looked as if they just flipped a few spotlights over and pointed them at actors faces. Despite these few flaws, it's a really enjoyable spy movie for anyone into cold war spy stories in style of le Carre etc. Grab a whisky and time machine yourself back into cold war era. This doesn't seem to be too well distributed tho so it may be a bit hard to find.

Not being familiar with the source material upon which this is based, I worried that i would have a hard time following the various plot entanglements upon learning it was based on a rather knotty British spy novel but the screenplay makes everything that is happening (and why) more or less clear enough for someone just catching it randomly (like i did) to get. Film's first half is really quite good. It takes you into the cold and somewhat distant world of this quite average bureaucrat's office and then home life (wherein you learn that he's being suspected of leaking top secret info--"very unimportant top secret info" as one of the characters making these allegations says--but top secret none the less.) Film really captures and sustains a very solid tone of slow growing mistrust by everyone in the film. Nicol Williamson's character realizes he's under suspicion right away but the various other characters' slow burning distrust of one another grows rather nicely as the film goes on. (In true British spy film tradition tho none of them ever seem to voice their distrust of one another to each other, choosing instead calmly and carefully constructed parables of being trapped in boxes within boxes.) As Nicol Williamson somewhat slowly tries to put together a plan to quiet his superior's suspicions about him and keep his wife and adopted son safe, everything around him naturally falls apart and the film's narrative somewhat suffers from having to keep clear the reasons why Williamson is doing what he's doing as well as what his superior's are up to (and why they too are doing what they're doing) It doesn't help that the film without much warning about halfway through flashes back to Williamson's time in Africa when he first met and began an affair with the woman who would come to be his wife---that part is of course supposed to explain Williamson's motivation and give you some idea of what's at stake--but because of its rather abrupt happening, you never really feel much except for confusion, especially once the film just as arbitrarily jumps back to present day. Film's last half hour or so gets somewhat jumbled and almost completely loses the nice quiet momentum it had been steadily building up---jumbled as in i'm not entirely sure what exactly happened but I get the main idea regardless. I won't spoil the events that happen but I will say that the big event that happens at film's end certainly doesn't feel like a big event, nor does it feel like a very satisfactory ending. Perhaps the novel was able to end this way because it was able to leave you with the proper sense that the main character's feelings on what is happening to him was resolved more or less, but the film literally leaves you hanging for much, much more closure on behalf of the fate of one Maurice Castle. That said there are some wonderful details featured throughout. From Robert Morley's delicious performance as the devious doctor whom the section employs for "physicals" of its employees, to the wedding reception at the easily cowed secion chief Richard Attenborough's house (wherein his shrew of an ex wife completely chastises him for breaking her precious ceramic owls) to the painting of boxes decorating the hotel walls where the villains meet in the first half to discuss what is to be done with their suspects to just about every scene featuring Derek Jacobi as the heavy drinking/no sweat colleague of Castle, there is much to be savored and enjoyed here...just don't expect any action or actual resolutions to the film's various plot points.