Even though I’ve seen Martin Ritt‘s The Spy Who Came In From The Cold ten or twelve times, I’m still going to possess the new Bluray version when it streets in September. Because it’ll be better looking, of course, than that handsome but not 100% satisfying Criterion DVD that came out in ’08. And because it’ll deliver that exquisite Bluray texture and specificity that many of us live for. And because it’s another opportunity to pay tribute to a 1965 film that was released in 1.66 — yet another defiance of the fascist edict that says all American-funded non-Scope films after April 1953 were released in 1.85.

From Wiki page: “The film closely follows the plot of the novel. One exception is that the name of the principal female character, ‘Liz Gold‘ in the novel, is changed to ‘Nan Perry,’ supposedly because the producers were worried about out-of-context quotes of Burton from the film being used in reference to his real-life wife, Elizabeth “Liz” Taylor.

“Two other significant differences are (a) that there are no references to Liz Gold’s/Nan Perry’s supposed Jewishness , which fact figures in the novel as both she and Fiedler are subject to antisemitic taunts, and (b) the explanation of the film’s/novel’s title by Control’s suggesting to George Smiley that Leamas’ decision to join Gold/Perry in death represented his final wish to reenter the warmth of human love and companionship and thus ‘come in from the cold’ of isolation and alienation that characterizes the life of the spy.”