112 minute running time which means it’s 12 minutes too long and I do wish they had tightened this one up a bit because it’s a good story with some really excellent writing (John le Carré) pretty well told … despite being overly long and plodding at times, this is a green-go, recommended movie. Richard Burton a stage actor, but he does chew up the scenery too badly here. Claire Bloom of course is Jewish. Both John Farr and David Lehman also recommended it, and now I do too.

We're witnessing the lousy end to a filthy, lousy operation to save Mundt's skin... to save him from a clever little Jew

Spoiler:

What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not. They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me. Little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands... civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? Yesterday I would have killed Mundt because I thought him evil and an enemy. But not today. Today he's evil and my friend. London needs him. They need him so that the great, moronic masses you admire so much... can sleep soundly in their flea-bitten beds again. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me.