One advantage to growing older is having more opportunities to reassess and reflect. This isn’t only a matter of understanding and/or judging what one sees: it’s also a matter of evaluating why one has seen certain films and not seen certain others. Why, for instance, did I never get around to seeing (1967)—the only Harry Palmer spy thriller that ever piqued much of my interest, because it’s also the first theatrical feature directed by Ken Russell—until recently, on a multiple-format Kino Lorber Classic release? I can’t offer any conclusive reason, but now I have at least a plausible hypothesis: because of the Cold War and the grossly unflattering view of Yankee stupidity conveyed by this movie, which made it an embarrassment to many Americans. Even if many subsequent Ken Russell films are celebrated for their stylistic excess, this one is subdued enough to allow the ideological excesses of Red-baiting Americans to register more fully than any stylistic filigree. (It also, thanks to casting a blonde Françoise Dorléac as its villainous Bond-style bimbo, is the only time I’ve seen the actress when she can momentarily be mistaken for her sister, Catherine Deneuve.)
