MovieChat Forums > Callan (1967) Discussion > Callan inspired by the Ipcress File?

Callan inspired by the Ipcress File?

posted 13 years ago by gus-186-777813
12 replies | jump to latest

I've just watched The Ipcress File (starring Michael Caine) on DVD. I'd seen it decades ago, on Betamax I guess, and found it just as enjoyable today, if not more. Truly a classic.

I must be slow on the uptake, but it wasn't until I heard the closing music (over credits) that I suddenly realised James Mitchell must have got his original inspiration for the Callan TV series from this movie. The resemblance between these two musical themes is unmistakable. And then I realised all the other parallels - from the working class irreverence and yet sophistication of both Harry Palmer and Callan - to the sanctimonious cynicism of the upper-class Dalby & Ross personified so well by Hunter and others of his ilk portrayed throughout the Callan series. Also the dreary dingy work settings in both. Etc. Etc.

Now that I have raised the question I'm sure that other devotees will spot many other similarities.

Of course, this is not to take away from Mitchell's achievement at all - Callan is very much its own unique story - but its fun to imagine Mitchell seeing the movie in 1965, playing with the idea over 1966 until finally fleshing it out into the TV series launched in 1967.

[–] grendelkhan 12 years ago

I first encountered Callan in the movie version, which was shown one afternoon on USA Cable (mid-late 80s) and my first thought was that it looked like Harry Palmer, minus Michael Caine. I had seen Funeral in Berlin, by that point, though I can't remember about IPCRESS (I believe I had seen Billion Dollar Brain several years earlier, on a weekend movie); and the similarity was striking. I never remembered the title of the film until later, when I read about the Callan series and watched the R1 DVDs. It would have been nice to see a meeting between Harry Palmer and David Callan; perhaps as rivals in some inter-service turf war.

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"

[–] gus-186-777813 12 years ago

Perhaps we should write it. Which actors could do justice to Callan and to Palmer today? And, of course, which director?? Not the guy who did the recent Tinker Tailor, I think.

I'm not sure if I've seen 'Berlin' and 'Brain' before or not. Now that you've mentioned them, I'll track them down. Thanks!

[–] grendelkhan 12 years ago

Good luck if you are in the US. Paramount let Funeral in Berlin go out of print, but Billion Dollar Brain is available still (I think).

I think Paul Greengass might do it justice, possibly Michael Mann; Martin Campbell, maybe. I can't see anyone other than Caine as Palmer or Woodward as Callan. I don't think you can find actors today with that combination of subtlety and intensity.

On the Prisoner board, I did post a short scene of both Harry Palmer and David Callan arriving in the Village, though it is gone now. Palmer awakes to find himself brought before Colonel Ross, only to learn that he is Number 2 and Palmer has been unwittingly working for the people who run the Village (based on Guy Doleman playing Ross and the first Number 2, in the premiere episode of The Prisoner). Callan awakes in The Village and has a look around, where he runs across Lonely in the cafe (he smells him first, of course). Lonely fills him in about things and tells him there is no escape. Callan still tries and is brought to the Green Dome, where he meets Toby Mears, who laughs at him and says he is not in charge, nor is Hunter. Then Lonely enters and begins speaking in a Scottish accent (as Russell Hunter really did) and lets Callan know that he is number two. As an extra nod, there is a table with toy soldiers, which Callan picks up and sees that they have his face, then smashes the line in anger. I had fun doing it. I was inspired by a short story in the anthology series Tales of the Shadowmen, where French writer Xavier Maumejean had a quick piece about the original Village, with Sherlock Holmes as Prisoner. Holmes escapes and the end reveals that Number 2 is Denis Nayland Smith (of the Fu Manchu stories) and Number 1 is Winston Churchill (Churchill created the concept of concentration camps during the Boer War). They decide to designate any troublesome prisoners with the number 6.

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"

[–] gus-186-777813 12 years ago

I haven't been able to track down Funeral in Berlin yet, but I did get hold of Billion Dollar Brain and just finished watching it tonight.

It's quite different from 'Ipcress', isn't it? I think the studio execs let all those exchange control pounds piling up in Britain go to their heads. It's got some nice touches, though. Like the way the Russians gaily leave Harry all alone out in the middle of the frozen Baltic at the end of the movie. And did you notice that was a teenage Susan George picking away at her pastry with Harry on the train?

I think you're a bit hard on contemporary actors. I think Jude law could do his own version of Harry. And while Woodward nailed Callan, it's the only part I ever saw him in that I thought he did nail. Michael Sheen has shown a pretty incredible range - I reckon he could at least make a worthy attempt. It might be a more difficult to find someone to surpass Russell Hunter as Lonely.

I love your Prisoner scenarios, thought you're obviously much more familiar with this genre than am I. I especially like the notion of having an actor's past character following him into a different story - as with Ross, Doleman and Number 2. Kind of like "alternate movie universes" stepping on each others' toes. I can see many possibilities for that mechanism.

I used to have a running contest with my youngest daughter to see who could spot the culprit first. That was ok for movies, but we had to give up on TV shows because you could always guess based on which actors they cast in the episode. Which is a similar dynamic.

Anyway, thanks for filling me in, Khan.

Cheers, Gus

[–] grendelkhan 10 years ago

A few years later,

Funeral in Berlin can be found in R1, from the Warner Archives site, as a manufacture-on-demand disc. I believe R2 had a 3 disc set, with commentary from Caine.

I've never been much of a fan of Jude Law. I can't see him as Palmer. You need someone who can be charming and anti-authoritarian. For Callan, you need the anger and disgust that Woodward portrayed so well. Palmer is supposed to be a soldier who was caught running in the Black Market, so you also need someone who is convincing as an enlisted soldier. Callan is an ex-criminal, forced to work for Hunter, so you need someone convincing in that role. I could see someone like Sean Bean as Callan. No name immediately leaps to mind for Palmer. really, for either, I would go more the character actor route than lead actor. A younger Gary Oldman might have been interesting as either.

"Fortunately, Ah keep mah feathers numbered for just such an emergency!"

[–] pablo-taylor 12 years ago

"I can't see anyone other than Caine as Palmer or Woodward as Callan. I don't think you can find actors today with that combination of subtlety and intensity."

I think there's more room for recasting "Palmer" (the character is nameless in the books) as the films are adaptations, rather the being completely original and Caine differs somewhat from the Deighton version who was a slightly older northerner.

Callan is different in that the character was written with Woodward specifically in mind, though if he hadn't already played Bond I'd have said that Daniel Craig would be ideal. Add to that Brian Cox as Hunter, Benedict Cumberbatch as Meres and Jamie Foreman as Lonely.

[–] m-j-mooney 11 years ago

Excellent casting, except that Lonely HAS to be Andy Serkis!

[–] instinxdotcom 10 years ago

Brian Cox could absolutely nail Hunter, but it would almost be typecasting - as would Sean Bean as Callan (although he's too old for it now). I think it would be interesting to see what someone like Ricky Gervais (playing it straight) could do with Hunter. He might be a revelation (like Michael J Fox in the Good Wife.)

And what about Paul Bettany for Callan? He certainly knows how to seethe ... and play the heavy, without coming off like a complete thug. I could easily see him and Cummerbatch (brilliant idea as Meres) sparking off each other. Believe it or not, Gervais is 10 years older than Bettany and could be made to look older.

It's fun imagining ...

[–] towton2 8 years ago

In a remake of Callan the obvious actor I chose ,before reading this blog I should add, was Daniel Craig.So glad others agree.

[–] duke-verity 8 years ago

James Mitchell had been dealing with Cold War espionage themes in his early television writing (including single one-off drama plays) for some years before the film of The Ipcress File was released in cinemas in 1965. Mitchell had also already created the forerunner for David Callan by writing the bleak and brutal John Craig spy novels (written under the pen name of James Munro), which clearly point the way towards the themes later explored in the Callan television series.

When he came to pen his own Sixties Cold War espionage fiction such as the original Callan pilot play, Mitchell was strongly influenced by the themes and style of John le Carré's early spy novels 'Call For the Dead' (1961) and - most especially - 'The Spy Who Came In From the Cold' (1963).

le Carré's classic of the espionage genre really is the prototype for the anti-Bond sub-genre, on both page and screen. Len Deighton's novel of 'The Ipcress File' sold reasonably well, but le Carré's shockingly bleak 'The Spy Who Came In From the Cold' was indisputably more famous, more renowned and more widely read on a global scale.

The novel (made into a film in 1965 starring Richard Burton) was the first truly influential spy story to give us the dramatic paradigm of the working-class anti-hero being used as cannon fodder by his callous aristocratic superiors; a now very familiar fictional trope, using the spy genre as an allegory for the English class system and the sordid decline of post-imperial Britain.

le Carré's protagonist, Leamas - an ageing, world weary Irishman working for the British Secret Intelligence Service - is the direct influence for every chippy working-class spy who followed, including of course James Mitchell's classic television creation, Callan. It was part of a downbeat, deglamourized, revisionist view of the spy trade which became perversely fashionable in the Sixties as an ironic counterpoint to the glitzy, camp shenanigans of the Bond franchise (and its even campier imitators such as the Flint movies, The Man From U.N.C.L.E TV series, and The Avengers from British TV).

Re- any musical similarities between Callan and John Barry's score for The Ipcress File; this was coincidental and was not because of James Mitchell's involvement. The title theme to Callan was a piece of ambient library music chosen by the pilot episode's producer to save on costs. Such 'pre-prepared' library scores were fashionable, economical and commonly used in British TV during the Sixties era.

[–] gus-186-777813 8 years ago

Thanks for the extra detail, Duke. I'd love to take it at face value and your references make sense, but I'd appreciate some insight into how you know all this "fly-on-the-wall" level of detail. For instance, specifically, how do you know that the theme was chosen from a library and not commissioned for the show?

[–] duke-verity 8 years ago

The 'Callan Theme' came from what is termed in the trade 'stock incidental' music - library tracks which are then licensed for use in film, television and radio (and nowadays web use). The theme was composed and recorded by the Dutch musician Jan Stoeckart (under the pseudonym of Jack Trombey), and was originally released under the album title of 'Girl in the Dark' in 1966. It was an album of moodily noirish ambient tracks (with acoustical, electronic effects, including the Callan theme's notable bass reverb motif) which were ideal for use in television mood music/title tracks for dark thrillers and psychological dramas. ATV Television had actually already used the 'Girl in the Dark' track on several television dramas in 1966 and 1967, several months before it was used for Callan.

The producer of the Callan pilot episode, Leonard White, heard the track on a sample record at the Teddington Studios sound department. He was searching for a cost-effective way of scoring the television play. He liked what he heard, contacted the rights holders and payed the fee for its use as a ready-prepared library track on the programme. That's how it later came to be known as the 'Callan theme', with its now iconically ambient, melancholy quality.

Edward Woodward actually recorded a cover version (yes, he was a professional standard tenor!... Woodward had a prolific recording career and a fine singing voice) of Stoeckart/Trombey's composition, with specially written lyrics for an album titled 'This Man Alone' in 1970. It's now quite a collector's item, if you can get hold of the original vinyl pressing! For Callan fans it's worth trudging the vintage record shops of Britain in search of one, along with Woodward's several other concept albums.