Espionage, betrayals, paranoia: a dozen of John Le Carré's novels have appeared on the screen, sweeping aside the great upheavals of contemporary history, from the Cold War to the Arab Spring, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
To read also:
The spy who came from the cold, A pure spy, The Taupe
... The books which made the glory of John Le Carré
The Spy Who Came From the Cold
(1965)
Success in bookstores,
The Spy Who Came From the Cold
, Le Carré's third novel, became a film only two years after its release.
Shot in black and white, with a staging in line, the film follows the adventures of a British secret agent (played by Richard Burton), accepting a mission intended to unmask a former Nazi converted into communist espionage.
It marks the beginnings of the privileged relationship between Le Carré and cinema.
Other probably less successful adaptations followed, including
The Little Girl with the Drum
by George Roy Hill (1984) and
La Maison Russie
(1990) with Sean Connery, before more complex films from the 2000s.
The Gardener's Constance
(2005)
The sublimated landscapes of Kenya, a moving love story between a British diplomat married to a lawyer militant against the pharmaceutical industry, the glamorous couple formed by Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz ... With
The Constant gardener
(
La constance du jardinier
en VF), directed by the Brazilian Fernando Meirelles (
The City of God
), the work of Le Carré meets the general public.
Rachel Weisz wins the following year the Oscar for best actress in a supporting role for the character of Tessa, who pays with her life for her stubbornness but reveals to himself her husband, a character until then a little dull and. .. passionate about gardening.
The Mole
(2011)
Far from the bubbling worlds of a James Bond, the Le Carré version of the secret service world is a grayish and starchy universe, as illustrated by the adaptation of
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
(
La mole
en VO) in 2011, one of his most successful.
Directed by the Swede Tomas Alfredson, the film offers Gary Oldman the role of Smiley, the tired spy in charge of tracking down a traitor within the British services (the "circus").
Betrayals, secrets, silences and cigarette smoke hover over this film with a (very) complex plot and a 99% male cast.
La Taupe
brings together the best of British actors from John Hurt to Tom Hardy to Benedict Cumberbatch and Colin Firth.
It will receive the Batfa for best British film in 2012 and will bring up to date
La mer
(by Charles Trenet), sung by Julio Iglesias.
The Night Director
(2016)
Why leave it to others to adapt Le Carré's works?
Two of his sons, Simon and Stephen Cornwell, decide to take up the challenge, through their production company Ink Factory.
Their first attempt is
A Very Wanted Man
(2014), a film adaptation of a 2008 novel starring Philip Seymour Hoffman.
They then produced
The Night Manager
, this time for television.
Developed by AMC, the American pay-per-view channel, and the BBC, this glamorous mini-series reunites Hugh Laurie as villain, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Debicki (
Tenet
) and Tom Hiddleston as the Night Watchman, who becomes an agent of the secret service to arrest an arms dealer.
The series is breaking audience records in Great Britain, with an average of 6 million viewers per episode.
The Little Girl with the Drum
(2018)
The meeting of the Antipodes: in 2018, it was the virtuoso Park Chan-Wook who adapted a novel by Le Carré.
Known for having electrified the Cannes Film Festival with
Old Boy
and
Mademoiselle
, the South Korean director has adapted
the critically acclaimed
Little Girl with the Drum
for the small screen
.
The miniseries, her first foray into the small screen, features Florence Pugh, since seen in
The Daughters of Doctor March
.
She plays an actress recruited by the character played by Alexander Skarsgard to become a double agent.
She joined an Israeli counterterrorism cell and infiltrated a Palestinian organization carrying out attacks in Europe.