John Le Carre’s classic spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is get its world premiere at the 8th Venice International Film Festival on September 5th – five days ahead of its UK release.
The film, shot in London, Budapest and Istanbul, is directed by Tomas Alfredson from a screenplay by Peter Straughan.
For those of you pretending not to know the story of the greatest spy novel ever written, Gary Oldman takes up the mantle of legendary spy George Smiley – immortalised on the small screen by Sir Alec Guinness – a recently retired spy doing his best to adjust to a life outside the secret service.
However, when a disgraced agent reappears with information concerning a mole at the heart of ‘the Circus’, Smiley is drawn back into the murky field of espionage.
Tasked with investigating which of his trusted former colleagues has chosen to betray him and their country, Smiley narrows his search to four suspects – all experienced, urbane, successful agents – but past histories, rivalries and friendships make it far from easy to pinpoint the man who is eating away at the heart of the British establishment.
We’ve already brought you the trailer and poster for this big screen adaptation and now we can top even those goodies with John le Carré’s own thoughts on the film.
“The film, through my very personal prism, is a triumph,” says the author (real name David Cornwell),
On the relationship between the book and film he says: “It’s not the film of the book. It’s the film of the film, and to my eye a work of art in its own right. I’m very proud to have provided Alfredson with the material, but what he made of it is wonderfully his own.”
As for comparison’s between Guinness and Gary Oldman in the role of Smiley, the author says: “if people write to me and say, ‘How could you let this happen to poor Alec Guinness,’ I shall reply that, if ‘poor Alec’ had witnessed Oldman’s performance, he would have been the first to give it a standing ovation.”
Buy the BBC adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on DVD from the seenit.co.uk store, Amazon.co.uk or HMV.com. The original novel is available from Amazon.co.uk and the seenit.co.uk store.