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- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Languages:
- Length:
- 108 minutes (Uncut)
- Review Format:
- DVD
- Year:
- 1965
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Thriller
- Director:
- Outstanding Performances:
- Premiss:
- Secret agent faces another mission - which may prove to be his last.
- Themes:
- Advertising | Alienation | Atheism | Coming-of-age | Compassion | Communism | Corporate Power | Courage | Curative | Destiny | Emotional repression | Empathy | Ethnicity | Genocide | Guilt | Identity | Individualism | Justice | Loneliness | Love | Loyalty | Materialism | Narcissism | Nostalgia | Personal | Political | Political Correctness | Propaganda | Redemption | Republicanism | Sadomasochism | Schizophrenia | Solipsism | The State | Totalitarianism | White culture | White supremacy
- Similar to:
Purported Political Ends Trying to Justify the Actual Means
Western political propaganda masquerading as insightful drama about both the Cold War and spying, as such - obviously based on the cases of Reinhard Gehlen and Heinz Felfe.
At variance with the actual facts of history, the West is initially-labeled benevolent
in only utilizing nasty means for noble ends - while Communists are brutish in both means and ends. Yet, Communism post-dates Democracy and is merely a political abreaction to the hypocrisy of the latter; meaning that, in reality, both sides are just as bad as each other precisely because their goals are identical: Complete Political & Ideological domination of everyone else.
Both sides actually mirror one another in their rampant materialism and lovelessness. The current state of international terrorism reveals the inevitable results of believing that only your side is allowed to engage in systematic brutishness, while everyone else must fight fair. The lack of an ethical difference between the two antagonistic systems is not explored in this movie - as if it did not matter: But this evasion of such a difference is only true in propaganda, not in the fully-realized drama this film pretends to be. (One wonders if the author of the novel from which this small-hearted film is derived still works for the Secret Intelligence Service - posing as a novelist.)
Western democracy (only practiced when Whites are in the majority) is a political sham. The so-called values underpinning it (political loyalty to The State replacing personal loyalty to friends) are impractical since such values cannot be used effectively against its enemies when wars are most effectively fought by totalitarian states. Such political charades are the icing-on-the-cake of a Western political life that tries to conceal the amoral murkiness just beneath the surface. It is easy to understand a White becoming disillusioned-because-surprised, as here, by the mendacity caused by White cultural superficiality, but no other ethnic group has any illusions about the true nature of White people. Activities like the British Empire, the Holocaust & Slavery make their nature all-too-abundantly clear.
The story’s lack of authenticity (the source novel would never have been allowed in print if it had told the truth about actual intelligence work) makes it a metaphor for Western politics in being cynically-credible about the true nature of all White cultures. The values defended by spies are the same as Whites’ own personal ones in this looking-glass story of their inner bleakness: It tells the truth about Whites, without compromising National security.
This morality play asks a simple question: How far will White people go in defence of values they claim to hold dear? It answers by saying: All the way (since those values are those of expediency - which has no ethical boundaries). The ends justify any means - even when one is doing no more than hiding the fact that ones values are so utterly shabby. Any other values Whites pretend to defend simply propagandize White electorates for the sole purpose of winning elections - elections whose sole purpose is to convince Whites that they value democracy.
Apart from the superficial politics of the movie, there is also the problem of the overly-intricate plotting - a scheme of almost superhuman subtlety
. It relies on so many human variables - and the attendant vagaries of human nature - that one wonders if such Machiavellian plots could actually work in real-life. Or are they just the frustrated, confidence-trickster daydreams of impotent bureaucrats?
Where this film scores is in the realm of the always-fashionable White existential despair caused by the volitional White ignorance of the actual workings of the White world. Such a world seeks to preserve its social system - against any and all alternatives - while actively despising that very system for offering no possibility of personal fulfillment. The ending makes clear the kind of life open to the inhabitants of White culture should they ever hope to find love within its confines. Like a convention of neurotics, the characters cling to one another for the very sustenance unavailable to their kind: Brilliantly illustrated by flawless acting. Despite this neurosis never being thematically-explored, the film’s bleakness is well-served by its black & white photography; while its black and white moralizing never gets to the fons et origo of such hopelessness - as if it were, indeed, as causeless and as globally-universal as pretended here.
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