Charles Dobbs (James Mason) investigates a typed letter accusing Samuel Fennan of the foreign office of his communist past. Dobbs' personal life is completely dysfunctional with his wife (Harriet Andersson) openly cheating on him. Dobbs is doing a security check on Fennan who seems to be amiable and claims to be young at the time. Then Dobbs is told he committed suicide. When everybody wants to leave it simply as a suicide, Dobbs continues to investigate. He interviews the wife Elsa Fennan (Simone Signoret) and things don't add up. An old friend Dieter Frey (Maximilian Schell) returns to town and his wife is cheating with him. Retired Inspector Mendel (Harry Andrews) helps with the investigation.It's a murky spy thriller from a John le Carré novel. It's slow and moody. Director Sidney Lumet does a reasonable job. It's not particularly tense. Even the action isn't that exciting. Dobbs is a pathetic character in his personal life. James Mason plays the personification of the British stiff upper lip. The mystery moves fairly slowly. It's not completely compelling to me. There are long sections of bland scenes like the play rehearsal. I think that may have been a bit British humor that I don't get.

Being one of the less familiar entries in the Lumet canon, The Deadly Affair is a superior John Le Carré spy cold war drama, based on his first published novel "Call for the Dead". The author's ability to infuse his characters with the necessary humanity, the flaws and melancholy of living in a world rapidly evolving beyond their control always does it for me and the same happens here. Mr. Lumet captures cold war London, describes the routine of decidedly unglamorous government agents (think 007 in reverse), tormented by nymphomaniac wives, sleepiness (…) and, typical of Le Carre, confronted with the emotional frustration of questioning old friendships. Few abrupt "Roeg-ish" cuttings aside, this one gains from its splendid Freddie Young photography, the exceptional production design and the jazzy Quincy Jones soundtrack. Performances vary from the (usual) delight in watching Mason, to the magnetic (Signoret) and the downright awkward – Ms. Andersson (Bergman's one time muse) may be a wisely twisted choice but acts unconvincingly hysterical. Genre fans expected.

First of all, I liked this movie. I could watch it several more times but there are some irritating things about it. Anyway, this is one of the essential LeCarre spy movies. It is unfortunate that the studio renamed Smiley as Dobbs, but James Mason plays George Smiley, and does so very well. Smiley/Dobbs is a cuckold because his wife just can't help it. This is not very well played out in this film which hints at, oh, impotence and nymphomania (does that still mean anything?). The point, for LeCarre, was that Smiley's betrayed love is a metaphor for the political betrayal that is his stock in trade. Who better to discover a traitor than the betrayed man? The plot is genius: a cabinet minister dies, possibly a suicide, after Smiley/Dobbs interrogates him about possible Communist connections. Smiley/Dobbs thinks there is something more to this; he thinks it might be murder. Assisted by a superannuated cop, he seeks the truth, and finds it. All this is well-done: a good story, good acting, good photography, etc. But! The soundtrack is often terribly inappropriate. Lumet must have known this and at one point the soundtrack ends with a phono needle being scratched across vinyl -- the one truly cool moment in the use of the music. And sometimes the editing is wretched: choppy, major speeches interrupted with meaningless shots -- I don't know who to blame for this except Lumet. Still, with all its flaws, a movie worth watching, especially if you are interested in Cold War spy thrillers.

The Deadly Affair was the top half of a double bill on TVO, with The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and I enjoyed it much more than the drab, monotonous Richard Burton vehicle. Sidney Lumet gathered the best English actors--Mason, Harry Andrews, Kenneth Haigh (who originated Jimmy Porter on stage), Roy Kinnear, Max Adrian, and many more, adding to them Simone Signoret, Maximilian Schell and Harriet Andersson: what a star-studded cast. Lumet keeps the action flowing adroitly; he brings the Harriet Andersson character into the story, rather than showing her in flashback as le Carré had done in the novel.All in all, it's a solid piece of entertainment. If you are a fan of Harry Andrews, as I am, you will relish the way he makes the retired policeman Mendel his own. The narcolepsy, the scene with the rabbit, the bar scene with Roy Kinnear, they are all wonderfully played. I could say that Mason is Andrews's foil, rather than the other way around. Simone Signoret is the wrong physical type for Elsa, but she manages to bring some real venom to her dialogues with Mason.