RING OF SPIES (RING OF TREASON)

UK, 1964, 90 minutes, Black and white
Bernard Lee, William Sylvester, Margaret Tyzack, David Kossoff.
Directed by Robert Tronson.

Ring of Spies is based on actual events. Ironically, at this time of the Cold War, there were many films about nuclear disasters including Failsafe and Seven Days in May. It was also the year of the third James Bond film. However, the previous year, the British government had been rocked by the John Profumo and Christine Keeler case. (This was to be later filmed by Michael Caton Jones as Scandal.)

This is an almost documentary-like presentation of a man and a woman working in the navy who are blackmailed into handing over secrets. They are connected also with a spy ring being run by a married couple in the north-western suburbs of London.

The film has a strong screenplay, co-written by veteran writer and director Frank Launder. It also has a strong British cast of character actors. Its matter-of-factness contrasts with the imaginative presentation of espionage that had started to emerge in the early 1960s.

1. What effect did the prologue and the epilogue have on the film? They stated that the facts were true and they pointed out the risks of espionage. How real is this? Did this add to the impact of the film?

2. Comment on the documentary nature of the film. The style of photography, the selection of sequences, the presentation of places and events.

3. Were the facts credible? Were the security risks credible? Are such leakages and such employment of British subjects as spies possible?

4. How plausible was the May story on the human level? The presentation of Harry and his drinking and his disillusionment, his greed and need for money? Bunty, as an ordinary type of person, spinster?, attracted by Harry? Did the film show enough detail of their ordinary lives to show how motivation worked?

5. What kind of a man was Harry? The first presentation of him, at the party in Vienna, his drinking, his girlfriends? The fact of his relegation that he was vulnerable to foreign agents? to Portland? His living in the caravan, his greed and ambitions? Why did he decide to spy? What motives made him a man of treason? Did he love Bunty or did he use her? How did this change his personality?

6. Bunty: what kind of a person was she, how ordinary and credible? Why did she change? Did the treason appal her? How was she vulnerable? Why did she want to be important? Why did she want to have things? How satisfying was her sense of her own importance?

7. The Krogers: as planted in England, living in suburban London, a radio in their cellar, the motivation of their spying? Were they credible?

8. Alex as the professional? How plausible was he? As in agent
trained for this particular work and planted in England? Comment on how the film showed his techniques of being credible to Harry and to Bunty.

9. What right did security agents and police have to put bugs in the room? What was your reaction to overhearing Harry and Bunty in their privacy? is such invasion of privacy necessary for a country's security? Why?

10. Comment on the dramatic impact of the sequence of their arrest. The impact of the counterbalance of the police waiting and the two of them travelling to London. What had they achieved by the end of the film?

11. Are films like this important to frighten as well as reassure the public?

12. Did the film moralise too much? Or was it convincing when it moralised?