A fiendishly complicated flim about betrayal amongst the spies working for British Intelligence.
Basically, there is a mole in the Secret Service and George Smiley, an Inteligence Officer, has been called out of retirement to catch the moke who caused the deaths of a number of British agents - believed to be in a very senior position.
What I find most puzzling was the apparent indifference to my companion to the fact that the mole had an adulterous affair with Mrs George Smiley.
George Smiley, the cuckold, knew about this early on, but did not mind, even when he discovered the man in his home when he returned unexpectedly one day.
In 1943, he was recalled to England to work at MI6 headquarters, and in 1945 successfully proposed marriage to Lady Ann Sercombe, a beautiful, aristocratic, and libidinous young lady working as a secretary there. Ann would prove a most unfaithful and rather condescending wife.
How odd that he was not at all outraged. How odd that he seemed to think it was nothing, because the flim made nothing of it and barely showed his wife.
The end of the film showed Smiley returning to his home. He enters the room in which his wife sits and strokes her head, instead of giving her a clout for all the trouble she caused.
It does not occur to anyone to question her behaviour at all.
So many layers of betrayal. The Secret Service betrayed by their mole, and Smiley himself betrayed by his wife who had an adulterous affair with the mole: Smiley doesn't mind, John Le Carre doesn't mind, the viewing public doesn't mind, my male companion doesn't mind and thinks I am making a mountain out of a molehill.
Truly, the men of Britain think nothing of this curious perversion of moral standards and loyalty. It is a bit like eating babies on TV and nobody thinking anything of it.
What a curious species men of the matriarchy are, who entrust their lives and their country to women who clearly cannot be trusted, don't mind doing so and are all probably a bit cross at me for pointing this out.
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