An officer of one side acting as if he is a likely defector – drinking, complaining about his job - in the hope of attracting a recruitment offer from an enemy intelligence officer, with the object of becoming a double agent. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ( French: La Taupe, lit.'The Mole') is a 2011 British Cold War spy thriller film directed by Tomas Alfredson. The screenplay was written by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, based on John le Carré's 1974 novel of the same name. The film stars Gary Oldman as George Smiley, with Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds, David Dencik and Kathy Burke supporting. It is set in London in the early 1970s and follows the hunt for a Soviet double agent at the top of the British secret service. Rupert Davies, of Maigret fame, played Smiley as a minor although important character in the 1965 film adaptation The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. [27] Bernard Hepton played Esterhase in the BBC television dramatisations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People. In the former, Hepton played Esterhase as speaking with a received pronunciation accent, but in Smiley's People, Hepton reverted to an Eastern European accent for the role. Those moments worked as Irvin hoped, and form the centre of Tinker, Tailor. They are like the extended interrogations in Line of Duty, except the tension is more drawn out and there are more gaps the viewer is encouraged to fill. Those interrogations would not have been remotely as effective, however, had they not featured one of the greatest acting performances ever delivered on the small screen.

Toby Esterhase — He is the head of the Acton lamplighters, the section of the Circus responsible for surveillance and wiretapping. Hungarian by birth, Esterhase is an anglophile with pretensions of being a British gentleman. He was recruited by Smiley as "a starving student in Vienna". a b West, Nigel. At Her Majesty's Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain's Intelligence Agency, MI6, Greenhill Books, London, 2006; pp. 18–19. There are three ways to approach this situation. First, head out of the glass door and climb up the wooden structure to your left to get to the floor with your target. Second, take the door on your right and climb up the staircase to the upper level. If you have enough Technical Ability points (9) you can open this door to the top floor and then make your way into the penthouse. You can access the doors from here or go along the outside of the building, providing you have 5 Body Ability points. Obtain Mikail Akulov’s DatashardHe next appeared during the German invasion of Russia, running networks of partisans behind German lines. He discovered that his radio operator was a double agent for the Germans and so fed him false information that confused the Germans. According to one legend, at "Yelnya", Karla caused the Germans to shell their own forward line (presumably a reference to either the Yelnya Offensive during the first Battle of Smolensk, or the second Battle of Smolensk). [1] Central to the novel is the theme of betrayal. Melvyn Bragg wrote that le Carré sought to illustrate that "the public or institutional default is always more excusable than the personal betrayal of faith." [5] Haydon's betrayal of the Circus to Karla comes as a reaction to a postwar world that "[deprived] him of the Empire he was trained to rule." Monaghan notes that le Carré (in Smiley's People) refers to Haydon as a "born deceiver," who betrays his colleague (Smiley), his lover (Ann and/or Prideaux) and his country. [13] Nevertheless, Haydon's exact motivations are left vague – unlike Philby, who espoused a deep ideological commitment to communism." [14] In the aftermath of Haydon's exposure, Karla moves ruthlessly to arrest and execute those Circus agents behind the Iron Curtain that Haydon betrayed. Smiley, appointed temporary chief of the Circus, scrambles to contain the disaster and save who can be saved, but with only minimal success. Karla's aggressive targeting of operatives all over the world necessitates the Circus to shut down safe houses and recall spies even in non-Soviet countries, including one in Vietnam. [3] Control — Longtime head of the Circus, now dead. Once a Cambridge don, he becomes convinced that one of his subordinates is a Soviet agent, and spends the last years of his tenure trying to uncover them. Smiley recounts what little he knows of Karla's history to his protege, Peter Guillam, including his interview with Karla in Delhi, and opines that Karla is a "fanatic", which he hopes will one day cause his downfall. After Jim Prideaux is freed from capture by the Soviets, Smiley interrogates him, learning that Karla came to visit Prideaux in prison and showed him that he still had Smiley's lighter.

John Le Carre, The Secret Pilgrim (London: Coronet/Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), 122-123, 129-130 & 141-152. ISBN 0 340 55205 0. Sandhu, Sukhdev (15 September 2011). "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – review". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022 . Retrieved 22 October 2011. So what comes next is a byzantine and complex puzzle with Smiley taking it all in and processing what it all means. There is no James Bond action here, just a very smart, minimalistic man pursuing the threads of a conspiracy. He looks at several of the inner circle, peopled by such European stalwarts as Colin Firth and Cairan Hinds. Firth in particular is a joy to watch as he seemingly floats above the actions around him with his winning smile. That being said, this is a very dense, expertly filmed (every frame has context and meaning), vision that somehow is just too British Buttoned Down for it's own good. Director Tomas Alfredson moves the film along at a slow but steady pace - giving you time to contemplate all the clues and red herrings, just as the main character George Smiley (in a magnificently controlled performance by Gary Oldman), tries to work it all out. See Guillam's view in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 178-179, and Ned's mixed feelings in The Secret Pilgrim, 123, 130, 152-153.In Smiley's People, it is revealed that Karla had a young daughter, Tatiana, by a mistress whom he met during the Great Patriotic War. His mistress was Estonian, and in his daughter's incoherent memory, Karla had her mother killed after he overheard her praying (contrary to communism's atheist views). Eventually, Tatiana began to demonstrate symptoms of schizophrenia. [2] Brevet, Brad (29 August 2011). "Ugh, No 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' Until December" . Retrieved 2 September 2011.

The film was produced through the British company Working Title Films and financed by France's StudioCanal. It premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. A critical and commercial success, it was the highest-grossing film at the British box office for three consecutive weeks. It won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. The film also received three Oscar nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and for Oldman, Best Actor.Although Smiley has no concrete biography beyond that offered briefly at the beginning of Call for the Dead, le Carré does leave clues in his novels.