This is a film taking a fresh look at what has passed for a spy thriller before. It's fitting then that a lot of the imagery revolves around sight and seeing. Palmer's glasses are an obvious symbol of imperfect vision (exemplified by a couple of 'blurred vision' special effects in the film). The camera in turn plays avant garde tricks on the viewer, shooting alternately through the crowded window of a phone booth, through glasses, ornaments and other objects and so on. This is a film in which vision, or *comprehension* - deciphering 'Ipcress' or identifying 'Albania' as really London, for instance - is finally of paramount importance. Palmer has to both see, then understand, the web that surrounds him before he identifies the traitor. At the most basic level this 'knowing' extends to his own self, through the psychological trauma he undergoes.

Class, too, is an important element. Whereas the public school educated Bond would be at home conversing with Palmer's superiors, Palmer is the working class staff man, insubordinate perhaps and cocky, but one who ultimately knows his place. Even the main villain is fairly aristocratic. This makes Palmer's final choice of shot all the more relishable. In the class-ridden snobbery of the secret service it proves to be one of the elite who is suspect and must be killed. Palmer is the better man - and not just morally either: his appreciation of Mozart ('proper' Mozart, too, not the appalling bandstand variety pushed on him by Daulby) and fine cooking, marks him out as a man of taste, in contrast to the surrounding snobbery and elitism.

This theme of class, as well as the locations chosen for 'The Ipcress File' mark it out as a very British spy film - possibly the best one ever in contrast to the Bond cycle, which represented an attempt to create a deliberate trans-Atlantic product. One parallel serves to illustrate this difference: Bond has an American agent friend (Felix Leiter), an occasional minor character in the series. In contrast Palmer shoots an American agent dead by mistake and they tail him in revenge, while another dies in his flat. There is no camaraderie here, and the snug special relationship is nowhere in sight.

Over the years 'The Ipcress File' has lost none of its edge (with the possible exception of the dated 60's psychedelia which confronts Palmer in his torture chair) or punch. Utterly compulsive as a spy drama, it remains one of Caine and Furie's best films, an example of a contemporary fresh approach that still remains a classic.

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