London during the Cold War. 16 British scientists mysteriously terminated their careers, and when atomic physicist Professor Radcliffe is kidnapped, the British secret service, run by Ross and Dalby, bring agent Harry Palmer on the case. Palmer follows suspect named Grantby in a library, but the latter disappears. During a raid in a factory suspecting to be holding Radcliffe, the secret service finds an audiotape marked “Ipcress”. Grantby agrees to return Radcliffe for a large amount of cash, but once back, Radcliffe’s mind is damaged, and he cannot understand physics anymore. The “Ipcress” file disappears, and Palmer is kidnapped by Grantby’s men, working with Dalby, a double agent, who put him in a brainwashing container. In a warehouse, Dalby orders Palmer to shoot Gross, but Palmer is able to resist brainwashing and shoot Dalby, instead.
“The Ipcress File”, the originator of the famous Cold War espionage film series, is a surprisingly fresh and suspenseful thriller, its hero Harry Palmer serving as an alternative and more grounded version of James Bond. The said main protagonist is played wonderfully by Michael Caine, here uncharacteristically wearing glasses for such a genre, and tries to unfold a giant web of intrigue, with agents and double agents. While the dialogue is standard and conventional, the director Sidney J. Furie tries to compensate this through a highly unusual visual style, consisting out of bewildering shot compositions and unusual camera angles, similarly to the film “Get Carter”, with such scenes as the waist of a man placed in front of the camera, covering almost 2/3 of the frame on the right, while the person speaking to him is almost microscopic, placed on the far left of the screen, standing far away from the camera. In another, outside a suspicious abandonded factory, the camera takes the POV of the driver of a police car, and after Palmer tells him to “lose that door, will you?”, the driver just backs up the vehicle for a couple of yards, and then drives with full force towards it, crashing through the door. Some of Palmer’s methods are quite clever: for instance, in order to track down Grantby, he goes to a special bureau and finds the latter has three parking tickets all received on the same location, with the car license plate going 417 FLU. Palmer then goes to the location, finds the car parked there, and just waits. Finally, a man puts some coins in the parking meter, so Palmer follows him to a library where Grantby is researching. The brainwashing container, where psychedelic lines are being projected over all four walls and on the ceiling to hypnotize a man inside, is expressionistic and unique. While some of the flaws are noticeable—for instance, the obfuscated double-agent-plot twists in the finale became so complicated that the viewers will have trouble deciphering who of Palmer’s officials is the bad guy— “The Ipcress File” has a rather robust structure. You expect a cheesy espionage flick, but get a much more ambitious, challenging and dedicated thriller.
Grade:+++
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