A Murder of Quality

A murder of an instructors' wife (at a seemingly second rate public school in England) brings out George Smiley. The plot gives the director the chance to bring out the best and the worst of the British class system. All delivered in quick, almost incomprehensible-to-American-ears, English. Very intellectual - very elegant. And Denholm Elliott (as Smiley) was such a superb actor, you wonder how he could live with himself!

This 1991 British production (Thames TV) for the A&E channel is based on mystery writer John le Carre's second novel. Le Carre wrote the screenplay for "A Murder of Quality," so the necessary changes for filming were made by the book's author himself. It's interesting that this is the only story with le Carre's character, George Smiley, that is set outside the field of espionage.

A number of British actors have played George Smiley in movies made on le Carre's books. They all are very good. Denholm Elliott has the role in this film. He plays a more reserved, humble character than usual. Glenda Jackson is excellent as his friend from espionage days, Alisa Brimley. Joss Ackland is very good as Terence Fielding, a school headmaster. And, Matthew Scurfield is very good as Inspector Rigby. The rest of the supporting cast all are quite good.

While this story has the usual red herring or two, it wasn't difficult for me to guess early on who the culprit was. The film even seemed to make it easy with one scene in particular. While I haven't read many mystery novels of the past few decades, I do enjoy the movies based on works by mystery writers. Besides le Carre, John Grisham and others are still writing today. But no one, in my estimation, will ever top Agatha Christie as a crime and mystery writer. Her super sleuth, Hercule Poirot, remains the most beguiling of all crime solvers, in my book. Since the early 1960s, I have read and/or watched the films on all of Christie's works that have been printed or put on film. Only once was I able to guess correctly early on who the culprit was.

Still, one can't have caviar, clams casino, lobster, and crepes Suzette all the time. Those are all the more enjoyable on special occasions, after many more meals of good but wholesome everyday meals. So, a movie based on a le Carre novel is enjoyable and satisfying at any time. Most movie buffs should enjoy "A Murder of Quality."

John LeCarré has been lucky in the adaptations of some of his books on to film. 'A Murder of Quality', though quite different from 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' and 'Smiley's People', not to forget 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold', is a perfectly crafted murder mystery.

Denholm Elliot's George Smiley does not try to imitate the famous portrayals by Alec Guinness but creates a similarly fascinating character out of LeCarré's most famous creation. Glenda Jackson plays his spinsterish "pal", Ailsa Brimley, a former colleague of Smiley's from The Circus during the war years. She is akin to Connie Sachs, memorably played by the great Beryl Reid in other LeCarré adaptions. Both Ailsa and Connie were in love with George and enraged at his reprobate wife, Ann. This and other LeCarré themes are used in 'A Murder of Quality' to their usual intriguing effects; the inclusion of homosexuality, misogynistic tendencies in some of the male characters and the hint of Smiley's darker, perhaps murderous past.

It is good to see Joss Ackland and Thorley Walters, old hands from earlier LeCarré adaptations. There isn't a weak link in the cast. Christian Bale makes a sexually tantalizing school boy, complete with his "criminal mind" and vulnerable consciousness. Diane Fletcher, the Lady Macbeth-like Mrs Urquehard from 'House of Cards' appears here as the tough dramatic arts mistress, the archetype gorgon, hearty and heartless.

Billie Whitelaw is a poignant mad-woman, Ronald Pickup a wonderfully spineless worm who lives with his "manly" sister, Fiona Walker. Matthew Scurfield is a fascinating police chief, a working grunt with many-faceted depths to his personality.

The cinematography is on the dark and gloomy side, as befits the story and setting. The music is superb, another wonderfully evocative score by the late great Stanley Myers.

This is now available on DVD from Acorn Media and I urge all LeCarré addicts to get it.

Great television like this is extremely rare, and getting scarcer all the time.

SO I just watched the film version of Jean LaCarre's *A Murder of Quality*. I liked the way the book ended better. However, it did prove something I had been saying for a long time: that Gary Oldman made a TERRIBLE George Smiley. He does not look right and he does not act right. You see, I'm a HUGE Smioley fan and, like most, I'm a fan from the books. Smiley is described as a funny little man and a disheveled Oxford Don. He has great humor about him that masks a great rage, and his rage is righteous, almost zealous. He is a champion in a battle between good and evil, and he hates the fact that he is constantly doing evil in the name of good. Oldman was wrong physically and was wrong in temperament. Eliot, a great if often overlooked British Actor, plays that switch between humor and rage perfectly, and he looks like a funny little Oxford Don. When I read that Elliot played smiley in this version I knew it would be great, because his turn as Marcus Brody in the Indiana Jones movies had all of Smiley's humor and the Oxford don clichés without his cunning or his rage.

In addition to Elliot, the movie has a terrific cast, including Joss Ackland at his sonorous best, Glenda Jackson, and a very young Christian Bale in a pivotal role (this was right before Newsies and a couple years after Henry V). It has that typical made for TV British mystery plodding, and one or two incredibly poor digital mats, but I really liked it.

A surprise to John Le Carré's readers and to viewers who already know about his works adapted into films, "A Murder of Quality" is a less challengeable enterprise for the great agent George Smiley, this time investigating a mysterious murder close to a respected school in England's countryside. Smiley and his ability to find clues here are more approachable to someone like Hercule Poirot than to someone who had difficult missions when of his time in the Circus solving global problems during the Cold War.

This TV adaptation goes according the original work, a small film based on a small book with effective and similar result. Both are good but they suffer from the greatness of seeing Smiley doing more important jobs going around the world working for the British intelligence. Plot is well elaborated but sometimes we lose interest in it, its lack of having a good pace to keep the story going. Plus, it looks like something already shown before time and time again, but it might work better for those who never watched careful and brilliant investigative flicks before. This isn't sinking into obscurity because people are rediscovering it due to very young Christian Bale's minor yet important role in it, people get curious to see some of his early projects.

Casting's good work is what makes of "A Murder of Quality" a very decent film. Playing the great George Smiley is Denholm Elliott, who brings a jolly quality to the role of the eternally enigmatic, contrived and serious character whose delivery of lines goes without affection, enthusiasm or surprise. Not the best portrayal of Smiley (Gary Oldman nailed it in every possible aspect in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy") but it's a good one anyway, very amusing and playful. And there's place for a remarkable performance of Glenda Jackson, playing George's best friend and helper with the case, and the efficient presences of David Threlfall and Joss Ackland.

A good dramatic suspense but never effervescent as Carré's stories tend to be. 7/10