Freed from the spy thriller's Bondage to clichés of sexual adventure, and heroic notions of sacrifice and gain, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is a portrait of the sordid and twice-thankless work of the double agent. Director Martin Ritt records, from clandestine corners (as if he were the secret agent), the painful last episode in the life of John le Carré's jaded, spent spy Alec Leamas. Richard Burton plays Leamas so near the edge that, when he is assigned to pass himself off as a defector to East Germany, he nearly believes the rumors of his own demise. Little gray men in a big gray city, on both sides of the Berlin Wall, and no one “can afford to be less ruthless than our opposition,” as Leamas is told by his superior (known simply as Control): these are the heroes and this the grubby realpolitik of the Cold War from which Leamas can neither distinguish nor extricate himself. Bye bye, James Bond.