Customer Reviews

A Dandy in Aspic [VHS]

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A partly unexceptional spy thriller with many bits of radiance. You must appreciate this film for its brilliant and absorbing use of locations ("Cold War" West Berlin and London) and its sometimes avant garde execution. A London-based Russian intelligence operative posing as a British spy confronts a mid-life identity struggle and seeks to restore his life in Moscow. He's ordered to eliminate a rampant Russian assassin, and is shocked when the name of the target is in fact his own. Story situations are at times improbable, but always entertaining. Lead actor (and substitute director) Laurence Harvey delivers a stiff but mostly entertaining performance as the Man With No Identity. Dialogue is snappy and at times downright fantastic (perhaps an echo of Eastwood pictures of the same period). The layers of character struggle are a bit forced, but do inspire personal consideration. This is no James Bond, but definitely a worthwhile addition to any collection. Furthermore, the execution (angles/editing) is often unorthodox and always fun. As above, the use of locations is amazing; they in fact are characters of their own, especially given the historical situation (Berlin Wall, and so on). If you do not attempt to place this film against other "spy" movies, you'll walk away happy and with a strange sort of "intangible" satisfaction.

Very entertaining late 60's Cold war romp through Britain and Germany. Excellent realism (Russian agent heroin user who longs for home simultaneously with the next hit!), Laurence Harvey's cold, matter-of-fact demeanor of the disgruntled agent who is pretty much fed up with the whole political spy scene.

Also, Mia Farrow is excellent as the ditzy, naive "bird" who takes a fancy to LH's counterpoint character. But the real kudos go to Peter Cook, the mod devil-may-care chap who supplies to LH all the pertinent spy goings-on with a mordant, off-color humorous style. (Note his playboy flirtations juxtaposed with his serious delineations of Home Office tidbits to LH at the penthouse tower bar in Germany.)

Quincy Jones gets raves for the soundtrack! Finally, the ending is tastefully done, all too apropos for LH's downwardly spiraling lifestyle.

One of those films that is remembered simply as a footnote to its director's career, it's hard to tell if A Dandy in Aspic would have been much better had Anthony Mann not died during shooting in West Germany. On a purely visual level it's evident that he shot most of the picture, not least because star Laurence Harvey, who finished the film, doesn't hide his love of crash zooms or seem to make much effort to match Mann's style. Certainly scenes like the shooting range sequence, a hotel room conversation shown via twin mirrors or the many shots featuring Mann's favorite Scope setup of a character hiding in close-up in one third of the screen while another approaches in the extreme distance in the rest of the frame have the original director's fingerprints all over them. If anything, the film's biggest problems seem to have happened before and after shooting: Derek Marlowe's script seems a rewrite or two away from ready and it's hard to believe that Mann would have gone along with some of the more extreme post-production decisions, from the echoplex dialogue effects in moments of stress to some of the more ill-judged parts of Quincy Jones' generally quite good score.

On paper the slightly schizoid directorial approach should be quite appropriate for this low-key spy thriller variation on The Big Clock where Harvey's undercover Russian spy is ordered by MI5 to track down and kill... himself, and perhaps to a non-fan of Mann's work it wouldn't be quite so distracting. Yet even away from the visuals and some occasionally inconsistent performances, the film has plenty of flaws that can be traced to both the screenplay and casting. Like the title sequence of a puppet getting tied up in knots in its own strings it's full of good ideas that never quite work and certainly for the first third never makes as much of its premise as it could. More Le Carre than Bond, there are certainly some strong scenes, especially with Per Oscarsson's drug-addicted Russian contact or Harvey's attempt to defect back to the East only for the East Germans to shoot at him to drive him back because he's useless to them back home, while there's some entertaining banter in the exchanges between Tom Courtney and Lionel Stander. But while the plot ultimately works itself out more or less satisfactorily, the film never flows or grips as well as it should.

Delivering his dialogue with his customary cold aloof disdain, Harvey is at once perfect casting for the role of the sexless cold fish with no sense of self but at the same time he's a hollow center for the film: his character may long for a real identity and to belong somewhere, but you don't care for or about him. Similarly, Mia Farrow's mildly kooky romantic interest feels more irritation than illumination: rather than showing the life he has missed, she often feels grafted onto the picture because the front office think it needs a love story. The rest of the casting veers from the wilfully perverse - Tom Courtney as a cold-blooded assassin with a chip on his shoulder, blacklist victim Lionel Stander as a Commie spymaster - to the plain bizarre, with the supporting ranks populated by satirists - Peter Cook ("Welcome to the Funkturm. On a clear day you can see them jumping over the Wall"), John Bird - and UK sitcom players - Richard O'Sullivan, Mike Pratt and Norman Bird - though none cause quite as much damage as the astonishingly bad but thankfully brief performance from Calvin Lockhart.

Cinematographer Christopher Challis does actually manage to make Courtney look menacing in several scenes, though his Scope lensing is poorly served in Sony's dark 2.35:1 widescreen Region 2 PAL DVD transfer. No extras either, but the disc should come with a word of warning - don't read the synopsis on the back unless you want to know every twist in the picture before you see it!

So, a curate's egg: not quite the disaster most reviewers often paint it, but less than a success and perhaps more worth a look for Mann's admirers than the casual viewer.

Truly enjoyable and memorable espionage films invariably have credible plots. One can well conceive of the cynical manipulations presented in films such as Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Tinker Tailor as realistic expressions of a ruthless and calculating profession. Dandy in Aspic, on the other hand, strains credibility to the breaking point. The main character (Eberlin) portrayed by Laurence Harvey is an administrative functionary within British intelligence who also happens to be a Soviet mole (Krasnavian) who periodically assassinates British agents. Harvey is convincing as the once "committed comrade" whose exposure to the hypocrisy and treachery on both sides has left him world weary and anxious for a way out of his predicament. Eberlin petitions his Soviet bosses to allow him to return to Russia, but his request is denied -- ostensibly because of his great value as a double agent. One of the first insults to the viewer's intelligence and credibility emerges early in the story when Eberlin (not even a field agent) is asked by his British superiors to locate and liquidate the Soviet assassin, Krasnavian (himself). One would think that an experienced double agent would be naturally suspicious and highly sensitive to any events which might suggest his cover had been blown. But Eberlin accepts the assignment at face value and never seems to ask himself why the British would entrust him (supposedly just an office bureaucrat) with such a deadly and dangerous task. In any event, Eberlin is sent to Berlin with several helpers to begin the search for Krasnavian. Once in Berlin, Eberlin believes (and apparently the viewer is supposed to share in the fantasy) that the British will not notice as he twice attempts to defect to East Germany and, in the meantime, does absolutely nothing tangible or believable to locate Krasnavian. Mia Farrow portrays Caroline, the obligatory love interest, who by sheer incredible coincidence manages to show up at the same place and time as Eberlin at several Berlin venues -- even though their encounters were not prearranged. If the viewer suspends his intelligence and can overlook the plot credibility issues, the film does have some redeeming qualities. If nothing else, the London and Berlin backgrounds do lend a certain authenticity to this attempt to depict cold war spy drama. Tom Courtenay is fairly convincing as Gatiss, the misanthropic and ruthless British agent who according to Eberlin "died (emotionally) the day he was born." Lionel Stander, as Sobakevich, actually adds an element of humor to what is otherwise a fairly humorless film. Finally, even though the film suffers from a pathetically unbelievable plot, Laurence Harvey is perfect in any role where he is required to play a cynical, disdainful, and emotionally detached individual. The role of Eberlin/Krasnavian was tailor made for Laurence Harvey. If the film had been built around a better script, this could have been a truly superb movie. As it is, the viewer is left with a mediocre cold war spy film which is primarily appealing to people such as myself, who are willing to give any movie of this genre at least a first look.