GOOD ENOUGH

For a long stretch of years near the beginning of film history, spy films were focused on espionage and the often tragic paths of honor and betrayal covert agents travel in the course of statecraft. The character development and depth were traditionally stunted by design: hints were given about who the protagonists and antagonists really were, but only as a function of propelling the international intrigue forward.

Not surprisingly, the characters driving the narrative were usually leading men and women of star magnitude. Greta Garbo’s Mata Hari navigated World War I; Cary Grant and James Mason illustrated Alfred Hitchcock’s mastery of the genre in North by Northwest; Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra brought Richard Condon’s Manchurian Candidate to life, a film that opened, chronologically, right in the heat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Then came James Bond, and spy movies started to be less about who done it and more about doin’ it.
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