A Dandy in Aspic

Like the western, the international spy story usually falls into one of two categories: the Spoof or the Morality Play. A Dandy in Aspic offers a little of one and a lot of the other. The anti-hero has his moments of fun during a few idyllic interludes in the percales with some warm-blooded British birds; the rest of the time he is trapped in a plot as inexorable as fate.

Haughty, dandified Eberlin (Laurence Harvey) is outwardly a London snob and secretly a top British agent. He is also a Russian assassin named Krasnevin who for 18 years has been knocking off other British agents as he knocks down a smashing double salary. Homesick, he begs his Red superiors to let him quit. Nyet: he must go on. And his job is getting tougher all the time. His British bosses have got wind of Krasnevin's existence--though they don't know what he looks like--and they want him expunged. As just the man for the job, Eberlin winds up with the unenviable assignment of tracking down and killing himself in Berlin, when all he wearily wants to be is the spy who came in from the gold.

Aspic was almost as cursed as Eberlin. Director Anthony Mann died before it was finished and Laurence Harvey took over, maintaining the film's tense, glossy style. But the Mann-Harvey combination could not quite cope with Aspic's thin and often incoherent content. No one in the film is properly motivated; nearly everyone is unremittingly evil. For the viewer, as for Eberlin, there is no one to trust.

As the haggard, laggard spy, Harvey is a stereotypical pawn of the politburo; as his most persistent bedmate, Mia Farrow is a soft sprite whose eyes are larger than her role. The stars are outshone by the supporting players, including Tom Courtenay as a psychotic British agent and Per Oscarsson as his junkie Russian counterpart, hopelessly in love with the heroin. Fortunately, they give Aspic some flavor as it moves toward a credibly tragic end, when Harvey suspects the game is up and utters the burnt-out lament: "I feel like a whore in a creaking bed."

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