Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy...

Last night we went to see the latest adaptation of John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. What an incredible film.  I was gripped right from the start.  The cinematography was amazing, the acting and wealth of great actors was incredible.  It was so well styled and is now in my all time list of great films.  And just so you know how much I enjoyed it, I burst into tears when it finished!  It was so intense and so beautiful that I was totally overwhelmed.

I love film as much as I love reading and I've been trying to think of the first film I watched that had such an effect on me and it must have been To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.  I was off sick from school and my brother was looking after me, I must have been 7 or 8.  I was mesmerised with both Grace Kelly and Cary Grant and afterwards I wrote a fan letter to Grace Kelly (at my brother's suggestion) telling her how much I enjoyed the film... signed Kelly aged 7.

This was my first introduction to Alfred Hitchcock, he is one of my favourite directors.

Hitchcock has been coined the master of suspense but he was also a great innovator of film.  His earliest work is definitely my favourite and if you ever come across The Lodger, 39 Steps or The Lady Vanishes, you must watch them.  These were filmed in the UK before his move to Hollywood where he subsequently made some of his finest films:Rebecca, Rear Window, The Birds, North by Northwest, to name a few. 

I do think Rear Window is Hitchcock at his best. The apartment block James Stewart's character observes throughout the film is a voyeur's dream and even though I've seen this film more times than you can imagine, I still see things that I hadn't seen before.  Grace Kelly's wardrobe is to die for and she is utterly gorgeous in every scene.  The detail is incredible.  His films are elegant and so well crafted which is why I adore him.

Of course these were films I was watching on rainy Sunday afternoons on our TV at home but these grainy black and white, early colour films had more meaning to me than the stuff I would watch with my friends at the cinema (apart from anything George Lucas was making at the time!)

My other favourite director of that era is David Lean, he of the great landscapes.  This clip is from one of his earliest works, Great Expectations; here you see the camera move slowly from left to right showing us the desolation and bleakness of the marshes and finally exposing the gallows in the foreground.  Shiver...

And then to Lawrence of Arabia and possibly one of the most famous scenes of all time, beautiful on too many levels.  David Lean is a truly epic director and what vision to realise these great scenes, awe inspiring.

I've really waffled on here but Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was an incredible film and I realise now it's actually one of a long list of films that have had a profound effect on me. I truly hope that Gary Oldman and John Hurt get suitably Oscar'd for their great performances and the cinematographer deserves one too!