The human factor

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Movie
German title The human factor
Original title The human factor
Country of production Great Britain
original language English
Publishing year 1979
length 115 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Otto Preminger
script Tom Stoppard
production Sigma Production
music Richard Logan
Gary Logan
camera Mike Molloy
cut Richard Trevor
occupation

The human factor (in the original The Human Factor ) is a British feature film from 1979. The agent film is the last work of director Otto Preminger and is based on the novel of the same name by his friend Graham Greene . He deals with the world of British espionage during the Cold War and the relationship between the Western world and the then apartheid regime in South Africa .

action

Maurice Castle, British, an MI6 officer previously stationed in Africa, lives happily with his family in the country, an hour's train ride from London. He and his colleague friend Arthur Davis, an unhappy bachelor in love, work in the security department of the UK Foreign Office . When it becomes known that confidential documents from the department in Moscow are emerging, suspicion falls on the staid Castle as well as on his colleague, Davis, whom his superiors decry as a bon vivant. To make matters worse for Castles superiors is that he married the young black South African Sarah, who is pregnant by another man.

In flashbacks , the film tells how Maurice Castle had worked as a British counterintelligence officer in Africa seven years earlier and then became a double agent for moral reasons . He did this out of gratitude to the communist agent Conelly, who had helped him obtain a visa for his wife's departure from South Africa.

The suspicion of espionage by his three superiors, Dr. Percival, Sir John Hargreaves and Colonel Daintry are increasingly focused on their drinking colleague Davis. When a tampered report from the department is passed on, Davis appears exposed, and despite Daintry's objections, Percival and Hargreaves cause Davis' elimination through a creeping poisoning.

After the death of his colleague, Castle is now getting more and more into trouble. He is tasked with working with the South African secret police. When he learns that Conelly is also dead, he decides not to continue spying for the Soviet secret service.

But when he learns of a Western secret plan, he feels morally obliged to provide information to the Soviet secret service one last time. Daintry, who likes Castle, realizes that he has trusted him by mistake and that Davis has been eliminated from the wrong man.

Castle sends his wife and son to live with his mother, as he is the only one to escape. With the help of the Soviet secret service, he was able to detour to Moscow, where he learned that for years it had only been an instrument, since his reports were leaked to a Western double agent so that he could be credible and that false information could be passed on by the Soviet secret service can. Sarah cannot leave the country with her son at first, so Castle is separated from his family for a long time.

Richard Attenborough in 1983
Iman Abdulmajid

production

The film was shot in Kenya and at Shepperton Studios near London . Preminger's latest film is linked to the exposure of double agent Kim Philby , a friend of Graham Greene. During the making of the film, Preminger, often disparagingly described as a perfectionist, experienced the difficulties of an independent film production one last time after his long Hollywood career: Since his financiers let him down during the shooting, Preminger had to part with some works from his private art collection. to finish the movie.

reception

“As in his earlier films, Preminger succeeded in staying true to his ideal and staging an entertaining film with strict craftsmanship in which the director goes almost unnoticed and the technique and the intentions of the filmmaker are not obvious. In this spy film, Preminger dispensed with the harshness typical of this genre and the obligatory action scenes and concentrated on differentiated character portraits ”. ( Eins Festival )

The lexicon of international films wrote: "A story of agents as a parable on the endangerment of human bonds, on the contradiction between politics and feeling: Otto Preminger dispenses with clichés and superficial action in his last feature film, instead concentrating on the calm and differentiated development of Character portraits. "

Graham Greene was not at all enthusiastic, however , who accused Preminger in a telephone conversation of "disastrous processing of his intentions" .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ One festival review.
  2. ↑ The human factor. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  3. ↑ Ulrich Greiwe: Graham Greene and the wealth of life . dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-24417-8 , p. 74 .