Who told the biggest lie? **POSSIBLE SPOILERS
Control? Mundt? The people in the court near the end? I still don't understand who really betrayed Leamas. HELP PLEASE.
shareThis is a MAJOR SPOILER - only for those who want an answer to the question above.
Control was the master deceiver in the film.
Control knew (through secret reports from Mundt) that Fiedler, Mundt's subordinate, suspected that British Intelligence had planted a mole (double agent, undercover spy) somewhere in East German Intelligence. Mundt had warned Control that Fiedler suspected Mundt was the mole. This is the backstory, what has happened before the movie begins, we are led to infer.
Control, knowing that Mundt is under suspicion, and assuming that if a talented agent works on that suspicionn diligently enough Mundt will be revealed, decides that the only way to save Mundt is to rehabilitate him. And the only way to do that is to create a double-sprung trap where one of his agents will "defect" and provide evidence - seemingly reluctantly - that will fully implicate and "prove" Mundt to be a spy. Control believes that the ambitious Fiedler will leap at the opportunity to confirm his (well founded) suspicions. Control does something extraordinarily daring - he induces Leamas to fake a defection, so as to implicate Mundt -- but only so that, behind Leamas's back, he can give Mundt the ammunition necessary to discredit Fiedler's effort to implicate Mundt. In a master stroke of deception, Control rehabilitates his top agent in East Germany (Mundt) while discrediting the growing threat to Mundt (Fiedler.)
At the trial, when Mundt's lawyer first makes the argument that Fiedler has fallen into a trap set by Control, he describes Control's plan as one of "inhuman subtlety." Turns out the lawyer only knew the half of it. Fiedler fell into Control's trap, but so did the East German court, and EG Intelligence.
So in the end, it was Control who ultimately betrayed Leamas. Leamas, no less than Fiedler, and Leamas's girlfriend, had to be sacrificed to keep Mundt viable as a source deep within the East German agency.
Thank you, that helped a lot!
"Thank you for a lovely evening."
Glad to be of help.
Looking back over my prior entry I realized I should have mentioned one other point. Reemick (sp?), the East German agent who died at the beginning of the movie, was initially the intermediary between Mundt and Control. Control realized Mundt's cover was certainly in trouble when Remick was assasinated, and crafted his subsequent trap based on the assumption that Reemick had been discovered by Fiedler to have been a double agent. That is presumably why Leamas's interrogators made a big deal of the fact that though Leamas was supposed to be "running" British Intelligence's East German operations, Leamas acknowleged that Control at least once had a meeting directly with Reemick, and that Leamas was not privy to what happened at that meeting. Presumably, Reemick was a conduit of information from Mundt to Control, and vice-versa. Once Reemick's cover was blown, Control knew it was just a matter of time until Fiedler or someone else in East German Intelligence would implicate Mundt, so Control decided to pre-empt the process of unmasking Mundt -- and do it in a way that would mislead the East Germans into thinking that Mundt was NOT the mole he in fact was - i.e., re-habilitate him.
I think we have to give Le Carre credit for coming up with one of the best spy fiction or mystery plots ever in "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold." The intricate twists play out with great ingenuity, but they never become unbelievable. Le Carre wrote some other wonderful books, but I don't know that he ever came up with a better plot. The movie does a great job catching the mood of the book and respecting the plot - though the viewer does have to do some heavy inferring to keep up with the plot. At least I thought so.
I have that trouble with all his books so far, but I enjoy putting the effort into it!
"Thank you for a lovely evening."
Spelling is “Riemeck” in the DVD closed-captioning. (The agent who gets shot in the opening sequence, trying to cross into the West on his bicycle.)
shareWhilst Control is certainly deceptive and manipulative, I shouldn't think that he's the greatest liar of the story. In fact, Control is very circumspect about telling outright lies. Simply put, he doesn't. He stretches the truth once or twice, but he doesn't actually lie. That's why it's so masterfully done.
Mundt, I would say, is the character that tells the most lies. Except, perhaps, for Leamas.
When Control promises Leamus that he would "keep her (Liz) out of it," he is lying. It surprised me that Leamus would make such a demand. Returning to the earlier scene when Leamus returns to the Circus to meet with Control after Remick is liquidated, Control's narrative is actually a portent of what will happen to Leamus: "Occasionally, we have to do wicked things. Very wicked indeed. But you can't be less wicked than your enemies simply because your government's policies are benevolent. Can you?"
shareAside from Control lying about not using Nan, the fact that he even brought her up to Leamas is actually quite questionable and something of a plot hole. Leamas getting rather defensive about her could be looked at as being just as questionable. As a seasoned section chief, Leamas should have realized Control was up to something by his merely mentioning Nan and, frankly, it would have been more realistic if Leamas had kept his thoughts concealed, then later took steps to, somehow, get Nan into a position where she 'couldn't' be implicated by Control and Smiley's machinations.
I'd go so far as to suggest that both Control mentioning Nan, and Leamas' response of giving implicit instructions not to implicate her (instead of actually taking action to safeguard her), are both out-of-character and, in reality, simply wouldn't have happened. In a way, both of them tipped their hand which held the potential for disrupting the entire operation.
I guess it was some sort of plot device to get the audience thinking about Leamas' concern for Nan's well-being, but it might have been a better movie if the exchange hadn't taken place, at all.