Where the Spies Are (1966)

Waste of time

To me, this movie is perfection.

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A bit over-talkative (although some droll humor is artfully concealed in the dialogue) with standard heroics and action brought to more life than it deserves by an especially hardworking cast: David Niven, Francoise Dorleac (her last film! Disappointingly her role is not all that large. She disappears for a long stretch while Niven is partnered by the redoubtable Nigel Davenport). Val Guest's direction too is not as fluent as Wolf Mankowitz's, but it could be the other way around. Both are credited, but who did what has not been officially told to us. As the movie was produced by Guest, my educated guess is that Mankowitz started the movie, but director Guest was unhappy with the rushes, fired Mankowitz and took over the direction himself. It's easy to tell the directors apart as one of them is not as fluent as the other and tends to concentrate and over-do close-ups. Real locations in Beirut, etc. help, but there also some very obvious models and studio scenes, Grant's close-ups of Miss Dorleac are attractive whilst Nascimbene's score is a bit too reliant on mechanical effects to be continually effective.

An amusing, tongue-in-cheek, British satire on the spy genre with David Niven at his debonair best. The comedy is dry and subtle, taking aim at the British and Russian spy-film caricatures. Niven plays the bumbling amateur who makes good but was recruited because all the other spies have been unfortunately lost - that's MI5. John Le Mesurier plays the part of the harassed, penny-pinching, civil servant with aplomb. His use of understatement in suggesting that the purpose of the visit was just to find Rosser and nothing more and his reference to the radio in a biscuit tin, exemplifies the absurdity that underpins the satire. Françoise Dorléac plays the sexy double agent with a light touch. A good support cast with Nigel Davenport excelling as the hard-drinking expatriate Brit. and Ronald Radd suitably menacing as the Russian spy master. In the 1960's the Lebanon was considered an exotic location, essential for this kind of film. As in the Bond films, the travelogue element with a "holiday" romance was an important part of the overall attraction.

Brilliant... Where the Spies are is superb. With outstanding performances by David Niven, Nigel Davenport and John Le Mesurier. Where the spies are will make even the most reluctant of reluctant of audiences nostalgic for the classic secret agent film. When Dr. Love (David Niven) is approached by an old equatence in the secret service (John Le Mesurier) his life is turned upside down.

Cold War hi-jinks of an implausible nature. David Niven plays the civilian who turns out to have an aptitude for being a secret agent when plunged into the role by accident.The studios were obviously still trying to convince people that David Niven could be a dashing man of action as well as suave and debonair, but unfortunately this line was always doomed, and this picture gives convincing evidence why.The plot is arrant nonsense from beginning to end, played by a puppet theatre of cliched stereotypes.Where The Audiences Are this certainly isn't.