The Dame in the Van.

In the last month I have seen two wonderful films, with two remarkable central performances by actresses who could hardly be more different;  Saoirse Ronan and Maggie Smith.   Both films were drawn from original material by two great writers,  Colm Toibin and Alan Bennett.   How luck am I?

I have already written about Brooklyn, and Saoirse Ronan’s pellucid portrayal of a young Irish woman.   In The Lady in the Van we have Dame Maggie Smith acting with so much skill, honed over the last six decades, that we do not notice it, as she simply ‘becomes’ Miss Shepherd, the woman who lived on Allan Bennett’s front drive for fifteen years in a series of camper vans. 

Bennett resisted writing about his rent-free lodger while she was alive. When she eventually departed this world he wrote the play from which he adapted this script.  On stage it was directed by Nicolas Hytner  (who also directed Bennett’s The History Boys  and The Madness of King George III) and starred Maggie Smith.   That was fifteen years ago, and Dame Maggie was then nearer the age of Miss Shepherd.      How she managed the physicality of this role is amazing, climbing into and out of her Coomber van time after time, negotiating an interior crammed with the necessities and detritus of years of occupancy. 

At first the van was parked directly outside Alan Bennett’s house in Camden Town, in London, an area of Victorian villas  slowly being ‘gentrified’ by middle class owners.      Most of them tolerated Miss Shepherd, despite her almost tangible body odour and eccentricity.     Some of them treated her kindly, but they were never rewarded with thanks.    Anything and everything that was given to her she regarded as her due right.   She was sure that people only did such things to feel better about themselves.   She may have been right.  Allan Bennett is clear that when he invited her to move her van from the road and onto his property it benefited him, getting it out of his line of sight, out of the way of pedestrians and stopping the noisy  altercations that sometimes erupted around her.    He thought both of them would have a quieter life.    He said she could stay for three months, until she got herself sorted out.  She stayed for fifteen years.    Never, in all this time, did she thank him.   Bennett writes that “I am sure (she) didn’t think it was kindness if she ever gave it a thought. …to her parking on my drive was a favour she was doing me, not the other ways round.  To have allowed herself to be grateful would have been a chink in her armour, braced as she always was against the world.”

Miss Shepherd (though that prove not to be her real name) was an intelligent and educated woman.  Slowly, over the years before and after her death, Alan Bennett pieced together a few scattered fragments of her life.   She had trained as a concert pianist, spoke good French, had been a nun, twice.   She had been 'sectioned' early in in her adult life and committed to a mental institution.   She was sure that she was regularly visited by the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that world leaders, both spiritual and secular, sought her advice.   She also carried a huge burden of guilt, and would serially confess her sin.    She wrote pamphlets (some of which are now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford).  

Bennett has slightly fictionalized his experience of living next to her.   On stage, and now screen,  we see two Bennett’s, one of them living the life, the other observing it and writing – or not writing – about it.   One struggling with Miss Shepherd’s demands, the other witnessing the internal and external tussles.     Bennett has written the testy interior dialogue and Jennings plays out both sides  wonderfully.   

Bennett has replaced his real neighbours with fresh ones, apart from the very real Ursula Vaughn Williams, the widow of the composer, played on screen by Frances de la Tour.   Frances previously appeared in Bennett’s film The History Boys, along with Dominic Cooper, James Corden and Russell Tovie, who all make tiny appearances here.    He also invented unctuous blackmailing retired policeman,  played here by another great British Treasure, Jim Broadbent.    Great casting throughout.

Maggie Smith recently said that when she arrived on set for the first time and  passed by Alan Bennett she muttered to him ‘Thanks a million.’   Amen to that, and the same to you Dame Maggie.     

Who's Who on The Bridge of Spies?

This review is in two parts.   The film is ‘based on a true story’.    In the second part of this review I will ask ‘Who was Rudolph Abel?  and look at  the remarkable story that the movie does not tell about the true identity of the spy eventually swapped on the Bridge of Spies.  

Spielberg’s new film is as masterly as ever.  Much more masterly, I suggest,  than some of his more recent offerings.    It is constructed with immense care,  artfully but unobtrusively set and lit.   Every frame is skilfully  composed,  shot by Janusz Kaminski (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List and Catch Me If You Can)  from a sharp script by the British Matt Charman and the Coen brothers.    The evocation of the late 1950’s and early 60’s is spot on.    It also has two remarkable acting performances.    Thomas Newman’s music is sometimes a little invasive,  but there is a wonderful opening sequence, which is wordless and unaccompanied.

Bridge of Spies  tells the story of the capture by the FBI of a Soviet spy, Colonel Rudolph Abel,  in the late 1950’s, and how he was later swapped for the American U2 spy-plane pilot,  F. Gary Powers.    Tom Hanks plays Jim Donovan, a lawyer who had worked for the prosecution at the Nurenberg Trials,  now appointed to defend the spy.    Mark Rylance, in his first major film role, plays the spy.  

But this film is not primarily about the spy.  It is about the American lawyer, Donovan, chosen to defend him at what was always going to be a ‘show trial’, but who did so with remarkable integrity and courage,  knowing the public would despise him for his role.    Although Able was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment he was spared execution.    The film suggests that Donovan made the argument to the presiding Judge that this Russian should be kept alive as one day he might be a useful pawn to swap if any American spy was caught by the Soviets.  This proved to be the case.    Four years later Donovan was asked by the U. S.  Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,  to work with the CIA and secretly negotiate the swap of Abel for Powers.    

Donovan again conducted himself with courage and integrity, insisting to the CIA and the East Germans that a young American student, Frederick Pryor,  should also be included in the swap.  The Berlin Wall was being constructed and Pryor had just been arrested by the East German Stasi on the wrong side of the Wall.    The film tells us that the CIA were not at all concerned about this young man’s fate, but Donovan insisted, and  the Stasi eventually agreed.   So an individual American’s humanity and courage triumphed once again despite the heartlessness of Governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain.   Just as in Private Ryan Pryor was saved by the American Hero personified by Tom Hanks.   And the Soviet spy’s life was also saved.

After the initial arrest of Abel Tom Hanks is centre stage.    We see a little of Powers, who is never portrayed as a hero.     Like the other U2 ‘drivers’ he was given explicit instructions on how to destroy the top-secret spy plane if it might fall into enemy hands, and given the means to self-destruct if he was likely to fall into enemy hands himself.   He failed to do so.    We are not told how much he revealed to his interrogators,  but I suspect he did not have a lot to reveal.

Tom Hanks plays Donovan with his customary skill, making an otherwise ordinary man quietly heroic, in the mold of a Jimmy Stewart character in a Capra movie or, more precisely,  Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch.   Hanks has done this many times before – and so, of course, has Spielberg.    I rather like the fact that an actor who is hardly handsome or sexy or has been an action movie hero, is actually the biggest box office draw in Hollywood.  They say his films have grossed 11 billion dollars. 

And what about the casting of the Englishman Mark Rylance as Rudolph?     It seems that when Rylance was approached by Spielberg twenty years ago he chose the Shakepearian stage instead.    I am delighted tht he accepted this role, and he has now been cast in Spielberg’s upcoming BFG.    Hanks recently remarked that  Rylance ‘ has a great future.’   I wonder if he knows how great a past he has.     Rylance is a luminary on stage – and was of course the star of the BBC’s six part adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, but this is his first major film role.     Rylance can play ‘big’ if he wants to, as when playing Johnny ‘Rooster’  Byron in the award winning West End and Broadway hit  Jez Buttersworth's  Jerusalem.   But he can also play small, doing so little that every tiny inflection or facial shift catches our attention and tells us something significant.     He is perfectly cast here.    Surely a Best Supporting Actor nomination is on its way.   If he wins do listen to his speech.  Rylance does not do the expected thing when receiving awards. 

The Bridge’s script helps Rylance’s minimalism.   He says very little.   He says nothing that is unimportant.    His repeated response when asked by Donovan if he is worried  is “Would it help?”   That is wonderful.   Someone knows that being a spy is like raising teenage children - in this at least - when things look like going badly wrong it is far too late to start worrying.   You simply have to trust the work you did before, in the case of teenagers during those early years when you were bringing them up,  in the case of a spy the trade-craft employed when setting up your legend (your false identity) and the routines and systems to protect it.   In both cases you also have to trust those who support you.   Your family or your employers.   Abel had done the best he could.      Although he had been betrayed by his deputy he would not sell out to his captors.    If this loyalty cost him his life, so be it.  

The script is clear about the nature of Abel’s trial.   He was bound to be found guilty and nothing was going to stop that, including the carelessness of the FBI who failed  to get a  warrant for the search that revealed  his trove of  spying equipment.      The judge chose to ignore this legal lapse.    This obviously has  a contemporary relevance, and Spielberg is forthright is his criticism of extra-legal procedures in Camp X. 

There is nothing gung ho here and there are no grandstanding acting performances.   Even Donovan’s performance when appealing the conviction in The Supreme Court is cut short  (maybe a bad editing choice?).     All the actors  simply gets on with their jobs, from Amy Ryan as Donovan’s wife,  Alan Alder as his boss,  Dakin Matthews as the presiding judge,  Sebastian Koch as the svelte East German official Donovan has to deal with in East Berlin – a lovely counterpoint to his role in The Lives of Others’ -  Mikhail Gorevoy  as the head of the KGB in Berlin is properly oleaginous.   Scott Shepherd is the rat-faced CIA man we love to hate.   Austin Stowel as Gary Powers is really a no more than a cypher, but the film is never about him.      He is a pawn in this game.   He is never the hero.    Donovan is.   Abel was also a hero however, as Donovan pointed out to the court.   A brave and true soldier in a Cold War.     

Some critics have complained about the film’s length.  I was surprised afterwards to learn that it is 141 minutes .   It did not feel like it.    It is a remarkable movie, and I strongly recommend it.

But who was Rudolph Abel?

It seems that there is a truer and even more interesting  story not told here.    The man caught by the FBI was not Colonel Rudolph Abel, but Colonel Willie Fisher.    A recent article by Simon Armstrong of the BBC (28/11/15) refers to  Vin Arthey’s book Abel: The True Story of the Spy They Traded for Gary Powers,  and David Saunders, a professor of Russian history at Newcastle University has also researched the full story of the spy's childhood and career.    Wikipedia also provides details of his career. 

According to a book by the Soviet former spy Kirill Khenkin Fisher was born on North Tyneside on the 11^th July 1903.   Sanders has seen his birth certificate.   Fisher’s  ethnically German parents were Russian Communist  agitators, forced to flee Russian at the turn of the century.    After the Revolution the family returned to Russia and Fisher  joined the Red Army.   He spoke English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish and was a gifted Radio Operator.    During the Battle of Stalingrad he played a crucial part  in an important fuhlspiel,  using false radio transmissions to convince the German High Command that one of their battle groups was operating behind Soviet lines and persuading them to send reinforcements.     This was a deadly trap that cost the Germans dearly.      Arthey considers this to be the most significant event of his career.

After the war Fisher was trained in further spy-craft and rose in the ranks of the KGB.   In 1953 he was sent to New York with a false identity to take over the Soviet spy network in the USA,  "The FBI was working hard to disrupt Soviet spy rings, but Fisher kept the show on the road” writes Arthey,  “I don't think his job was seeking out military secrets, but he was an important cog in the wheel that got information back to Russia."   He may also have been regrouping the penetration of the nuclear research site at Los Alamos.   The arrest of the Atom Spies, the Rosenbergs, had thrown this mission into a spin.     Willies’ chief operator there was Kitty Harris,  another English born Communist spy  previously trained by Willie. (Wiki)    But his deputy Reino Hayhanen was incompetent.   Under the threat of being sent back to Moscow he defected and told the Americans everything he knew.    Despite the cut-outs and the fact that Hayhanen did not even know his boss’s name (standard practice) Fisher was eventually arrested by the FBI and charged on three counts. 

At this point Willie Fisher showed what a good spy he was.    He told the FBI/CIA that he was Colonel Rudolph Abel of the KGB.   The CIA knew such an officer existed, but they did not know that he had recently died in Moscow.     So now the KGB knew that their main man in the  USA had been arrested, but that the CIA did not know his real identity.   Willie Fisher maintained this pretense during the four years he spent in prison before he was swapped for Capt. Gary Powers,  shot down over Russia in 1960.

Fisher had cleverly signaled to his superiors that he had not revealed his true identity.   He had not defected or betrayed his greatest secret.   The KGB bosses would decide if they believed him.   This would be  a question of life or death if he was swapped, but there was nothing more he could do.    Worrying would not help.     The film leaves his fate unclear, and rather suggests that it would not be positive.   In fact he was rewarded for his loyalty,  paraded as a hero in the KGB, and died in his bed in 1971.  

Steven Spielberg’s new movie tells of the arrest, trial and eventual release of this spy, but does not reveal this ultimate deception.     Nor do Spielberg and the script writers make it clear that Fisher was in jail for over four years before the swap.

All this must have been known by the film makers, as attested by the way Mark Rylance speaks his lines in rather Scottish, rather than Geordie,  accent.     "I've met everybody who knew him as an English speaker," says Dr Arthey.  "They said he didn't speak anything like [a Geordie]. The best we've got is that he spoke with a kind of Scots-Irish accent, which he told people was down to being brought up by an aunt in Boston.  Abel died in Moscow… where his remains were interred at the city's Donskoy Monastery.   His tombstone bore his birth name of William Fisher - the identity that was never exposed during his captivity.”     

Professor Saunders says “We make a lot in this country about Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five, but those British spies didn't have any rank in the KGB.   Abel is the only British-born ranking officer in Soviet external security services that we know of.”

It seems that Willie Fisher was much more remarkable in life than he is in this film.    Despite his politics I feel rather proud of him.