THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL. An Underrated Spy Thriller

The Little Drummer Girl, based on the novel by John le Carré, is a film no worse than the later miniseries. An Israeli diplomat and his family are murdered in a bombing organized by Palestinians. Mossad devises a plan to capture the PLO terrorist responsible for the killing, named Khalil. To do this, they deceitfully recruit Charlie, an American actress known for her pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist views. The woman attends a secretly organized meeting with a masked alleged fighter from a Palestinian terrorist organization (in reality, an undercover Israeli intelligence agent), and is then invited to Greece under the pretext of filming a wine commercial.

In Greece, Charlie begins a romance with the mysterious Joseph and recognizes in him the man who had worn the mask. After a romantic dinner with Joseph, Charlie is taken to a secret Mossad hideout, where the operation’s leader, Kurtz, convinces her to help capture Khalil by impersonating the lover of his brother. David John Moore Cornwell (1931–2020), better known as John le Carré, was one of the most highly regarded British authors of spy literature. He knew very well what he was writing about, having worked for British intelligence in the 1950s and 60s (first for MI5, then for MI6). As a writer, he debuted with the novel Call for the Dead (1961), in which he created George Smiley – a high-ranking officer of the secret services.

This unassuming character became the main or supporting protagonist in eight of the author’s subsequent works. Short, overweight, balding, unremarkable, yet a brilliant spy, he was intended as a realistic response to James Bond. Le Carré rightly believed that the agent created by Ian Fleming and popularized by childish films presented a nonsensical and thus harmful version of espionage, which is a tedious, mole-like job and has little to do with seducing beautiful women, using super-gadgets, and fighting deranged millionaires.

Filmmakers eagerly – and often with satisfying results – turned to le Carré’s work. Among the best adaptations of his novels are: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) by Martin Ritt, The Russia House (1990) by Fred Schepisi, The Tailor of Panama (2001) by John Boorman, The Constant Gardener (2005) by Fernando Meirelles, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) by Tomas Alfredson, and A Most Wanted Man (2014) by Anton Corbijn. Incidentally, the author participated in the making of some adaptations: he was an executive producer, wrote scripts, and sometimes appeared on screen in cameo roles.

The Little Drummer Girl, le Carré’s 1983 novel, has had two adaptations so far: in 2018, a widely discussed British miniseries was produced, starring Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgård, and Michael Shannon. Earlier, in 1984, George Roy Hill made his own version, casting Diane Keaton, Yorgo Voyagis, and Klaus Kinski.

The Little Drummer Girl A.D. 1984 was a box office failure and received mixed reviews: critics complained about the slow pace, lack of action, and Keaton’s performance. The criticism was somewhat exaggerated. The pace is indeed unhurried, but it serves to build atmosphere; the argument about a lack of action seems absurd, considering le Carré’s modus operandi; and Keaton is very convincing as a lost woman succumbing to manipulation and placed in a situation that overwhelms her. Equally convincing are Voyagis as Joseph and Kinski as Kurtz.

The former created a figure of a cold spy who, while pretending to love Charlie, truly falls for her. The latter played one of the most atypical roles of his career – although Kurtz does not shy away from manipulating Charlie for his own ends, he is not a demonic bureaucrat, but a realist with deep experience who serves his homeland. The three-dimensional characters, full of flesh and blood, are a major strength of this underrated thriller.