The final film by the great Anthony Mann (Winchester '73, El Cid) A Dandy in Aspic is a stylish and complex cold-war thriller starring Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top, The Manchurian Candidate) as a Russian double-agent working for British Intelligence who is assigned to track down and kill an unusual target.
Falling between the outlandish exploits of James Bond and the dour realism of John le Carré’s ‘circus of spies’, this paranoid thriller is a dark and refined affair, with a superb supporting cast headed by Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby, See No Evil) and Tom Courtenay (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Otley), wonderful cinematography by regular Powell and Pressburger cameraman Christopher Challis, and with a terrific score by Quincy Jones.
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Supplements
- Audio commentary with author and critic Samm Deighan
- The BEHP Interview with Christopher Challis (1988, 107 mins): an archival audio recording, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring the cinematographer in conversation with Kevin Gough-Yates
- A Time to Die (2019, 10 mins): members of the crew recall aspects of the film’s production
- Pulling Strings (2019, 22 mins): titles designer Michael Graham Smith and puppeteer Ronnie Le Drew discuss the distinctive opening credit sequence
- Inside Mann (2019, 12 mins): an appreciation by critic and broadcaster Richard Combs
- London to Berlin (2019, 6 mins): an exploration of A Dandy in Aspic’s British and German locations
- Berlin: The Swinging City (1968, 5 mins): original promotional film produced by Columbia Pictures
- Isolated music & effects track
- Original theatrical trailer
- Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
- Limited edition exclusive 28-page booklet with a new essay by Jeff Billington, an archival on-set report, Derek Marlowe on A Dandy in Aspic, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits