The Deadly Affair was the top half of a double bill on TVO, with The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and I enjoyed it much more than the drab, monotonous Richard Burton vehicle. Sidney Lumet gathered the best English actors--Mason, Harry Andrews, Kenneth Haigh (who originated Jimmy Porter on stage), Roy Kinnear, Max Adrian, and many more, adding to them Simone Signoret, Maximilian Schell and Harriet Andersson: what a star-studded cast. Lumet keeps the action flowing adroitly; he brings the Harriet Andersson character into the story, rather than showing her in flashback as le Carré had done in the novel.
All in all, it's a solid piece of entertainment. If you are a fan of Harry Andrews, as I am, you will relish the way he makes the retired policeman Mendel his own. The narcolepsy, the scene with the rabbit, the bar scene with Roy Kinnear, they are all wonderfully played. I could say that Mason is Andrews's foil, rather than the other way around. Simone Signoret is the wrong physical type for Elsa, but she manages to bring some real venom to her dialogues with Mason.
All in all, it's a solid piece of entertainment. If you are a fan of Harry Andrews, as I am, you will relish the way he makes the retired policeman Mendel his own. The narcolepsy, the scene with the rabbit, the bar scene with Roy Kinnear, they are all wonderfully played. I could say that Mason is Andrews's foil, rather than the other way around. Simone Signoret is the wrong physical type for Elsa, but she manages to bring some real venom to her dialogues with Mason.