Review by Gary Tooze

Production:

Disc:

Video:

Audio:

• Lumet's London (4:03) - the London locations of The Deadly Affair explored
• Original theatrical trailer (2:33)
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• Limited edition exclusive booklet featuring newly commissioned writing by Thirza Wakefield , an overview of contemporary critical responses, and historic articles on the film
• Limited Dual Format Edition of 3,000 copies

DVD included

Bitrate:

 

 

 

The Film:

John LeCarre's Call for the Dead was the basis for this gloomy, complex spy story. James Mason plays a British secret agent puzzled by the sudden suicide of Foreign Office higher-up Robert Flemyng. Mason had worked on Flemyng's security clearance himself, and can't fathom what personality quirk he might have missed. The agent suspects that the dead man's wife (Simone Signoret), a concentration camp survivor, may hold the answer to Flemyng's despair, but the Foreign Office wants Mason to drop the case. Mason hires retiring Inspector Harry Andrews to do some private detective work. What Mason and Andrews find out is more insidious than they've imagined; worse, Mason is saddled with a new dilemma--his wife (Harriet Andersson) has been unfaithful with a colleague (Maximillian Schell).

Director Lumet brings his American beady eye to the seedy English locations and makes the most of his special cast. While attending to the moody, doomy atmosphere, he ensures that are enough spy thrills and suspense too, as security officer Dobbs investigates the suspicious circumstances behind the apparent suicide of a high-ranking colleague Samuel Fennan (Robert Flemyng) from the Foreign Office, a man he has just shared a friendly chat with.

Excerpt DerekWinnert.com located HERE

Image :    NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

The Deadly Affair arrives on Blu-ray from Indicator out of the UK. The image quality shows a pleasing layer of grain and the contrast is impeccably layered. This is dual-layered with a max'ed out bitrate. It is neither glossy nor pristinely sharp but shows Lumet's intentional dark, grey visuals (he wanted to film in in black and white). Lumet described as 'colorless color' - using a process called 'flashing' as described by Michael Brooke in the commentary. There are some splashes of red (phones, roses etc.) that tend to stand out as being HD.  I would guess the 1.85:1 image is extremely accurate. It looks very clean, consistent and film-like. This Blu-ray offers a rewarding and authentic dour presentation in 1080P.

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The audio is transferred via a linear PCM authentically mono at 1152 kbps (24-bit). There is modest depth in the infrequent effects. The film's music is notable for the score by Quincy Jones (The Anderson Tapes, The Getaway, The Slender Thread, The Pawnbroker, In the Heat of the Night, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs) and a 'theme' (Who Needs Forever) credited as being sung by Astrud Gilberto (Girl From Ipanema). It supports the film gently with a jazzy, Bosa-Nova, edge that is cited later as 'dating' the film. There are optional English (SDH) subtitles and my Oppo has identified it as being a region FREE - playable world-wide.

NOTE: Harriet Andersson's voice was partially dubbed. As Michael Brooke tell us in our FB Group: " It seems to have been a mixture (of DUB and her own voice) - she was cast at the absolute last minute after Candice Bergen had to drop out (due to overrunning on 'The Sand Pebbles') and there were definite linguistic issues as Andersson had never acted in English before. From what I can see, it appears to be her own voice in sync-sound for the big emotional close-ups, but I'm pretty sure she's dubbed in the less important material, and possibly by someone else."

Extras :

Audio commentary by Michael Brooke + author and horror historian Johnny Mains and it's extremely informative. Mains has a Scottish accent that can be difficult to interpret at times but the conversation between them is filled with details of the production, cast, Lumet, the locations, screenwriter Paul Dehn (who is credited with the screenplays for Goldfinger, The Night of the Generals, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold etc.) and much more. I thought it was excellent. Also, other options to listen to while the film runs is a 40-minute The John Player Lecture with James Mason from 1967. It is an archival audio recording of an interview conducted by Leslie Hardcastle at the National Film Theatre, London. Another included is the 1.5-hour Guardian Lecture with Sidney Lumet from 1983. Another archival audio recording of an interview conducted by Derek Malcolm at the National Film Theatre, London and it is quite good. We also get A New Kind of Spy which has David Kipen commenting on screenwriter Paul Dehn who adapted le Carré's novel for this film. It is from 2017 and runs 17-minutes. Take One and Move On is a new interview with camera operator Brian West running just under 5-minute. Lumet's London spends 4-minute identifying the London locations of The Deadly Affair. There is also an original theatrical trailer, an image gallery with on-set and promotional photography plus the package has a limited edition exclusive booklet featuring newly commissioned writing by Thirza Wakefield, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and historic articles on the film. Being dual format a DVD is included and this edition is limited to 3,000 copies.

 

 

BOTTOM LINE:
The Deadly Affair is an interesting film - probably less a spy-film thriller than some might anticipate although it is infused with suspense. Lumet described it; "Thematically it was a film about life's disappointments. I wanted to desaturate the colors." I really enjoyed it. The Indicator Blu-ray presentation is perfect in both audio and video and the package contains plenty of very valuable extra starting with the commentary and the lectures, plus the interviews, booklet etc.. More of their amazingly complete work. This underrated film on Blu-ray is VERY strongly recommended! 

Gary Tooze

August 18th, 2017

Standard (no-book) Blu-ray edition coming in May 2020: or directly from: