Word: ritts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...CAME IN FROM THE COLD. Director Martin Ritt (Hud) has made John le Carré's novel into a masterly spy thriller, with Richard Burton giving his best movie performance as the worn-out British intelligence hack on a fateful mission...
...Martin Ritt, who both produced and directed, deserves credit for his cast. Oskar Werner as Fiedler and Peter Van Eyck as Mundt are good in the court room scene, though in general Werner is rather over-done and Van Eyck wooden. Claire Bloom elicits just the right amount of love from Burton. And Burton, when he sits waiting to be interviewed for a job, when he makes contact with the Communist agent, and when he looks down from the Berlin wall at Smiley, is superb. All he has to do is whisper, "I have to go early in the morning...
...than 5,000,000 readers have been hooked and held by pseudonymous Author John le Carré's downbeat spy thriller, which scores espionage as a grubby, ulcer-making career at best. The movie version is a masterwork in a minor key. Avoiding formula excitement, Producer-Director Martin Ritt (Hud) achieves something far superior-a climate of still, absolute insecurity that conveys menace mainly through undertones. And Richard Burton, playing the chief pawn in an involuted cold-war plot, will be measured from now on against his full, corrosive performance here. To have read le Carré can only...
...Director Ritt, without belaboring the tragedy of Leamas, coolly commits to film the grey nether world that the spy inhabits. There are no miraculous escapes or Union Jack heroics. Just ordinary men, trained to be distrustful, sizing one another up at a glance, measuring the assessment against every subsequent pause and gesture. Through ever-changing shades of perfidy on both sides of the Wall, the drama inches toward its bitter climax, made more agonizing by Ritt's detachment. He simply records an event and lets the shock wave follow...
...Martin Ritt, Miss Remick's director in another film, "The Long Hot Summer," has called her "one of the most exciting new personalities I have seen. She jumps at you from the screen...