After discussing The Ipcress File, the novel and the movie, I decided to start watching the Harry Palmer movies in general (starring Michael Caine), and you know what. I was surprised. With Billion Dollar Brain (1967), in particular, I found insights on everything happening today from Covid, AI, the Ukraine War, and maybe even the Kennedy assassination!

By Emad Aysha
Billion Dollar Brain was thrilling, impressive and way ahead of its time to the point that James Bond movies could have taken some lessons from it. I’m not joking.

The movie was a lovely combination of the four S’s – style as well as substance, sex appeal and also (human) sentiment. The cinematography was beautiful and telling, and the music didn’t feel like a clone of John Barry’s jazzy Bond soundtracks, as super cool as his music was for Ipcress.

The scale of the movie was also significant, taking the hapless Harry Palmer to Helsinki and then into the Soviet Union itself and then into the desolate reaches of Texas, the origin point of the diabolical plot. This is what the novel The Ipcress File was like; sadly, the movie differed, as they were stuck in the same district of London the whole time.

Harry is now a down-and-out private investigator, and he’s hired by a mechanical voice over the phone to do some courier work – transporting eggs, as it turns out – and in the process is offered a job with a new intelligence outfit by an old friend, Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden).

UNIPOLAR MOMENT: Michael Caine and Karl Malden, taking pot shots at the balance of power in the service of artificial intelligence.

Turns out he’s being set up, and so he’s forced to work with his superiors back in Britain all over again, trying to intercede the eggs which are full of pathogens meant to wipe out the Soviet army camped in Lithuania of all places.  

What the hell’s going on? Some nutjob in Texas, a megalomaniac oil tycoon who calls himself General Midwinter (played perfectly by Ed Begley), wants to wipe out the Soviet forces there to invade and liberate it from Communist control and strike a deathblow to the Russians.

His electronic brain, still not quite AI, tells him it can be done. Alas, the information fed to it by Leo is phoney, making the General think they have an underground army of agents (so his trusted aide can pocket the budgetary proceeds). Old computer maxim: garbage in, garbage out.

Leo also disobeyed orders from the machine by refusing to kill his love interest, Anya (Françoise Dorléac), a woman who’s just too sophisticated to be a Russian, even though her character is Russian. (He was supposed to shoot her in front of an Orthodox church, while she was disguised in a Soviet military uniform. How obvious can you get!)

Anyway, turns out the people they have working for them in Lithuania are former Nazi war collaborators. These people committed unspeakable atrocities for the Germans, along with Lithuanian gangsters and black marketers.

From a purely political viewpoint, this movie is fantastic, anticipating almost everything that has happened. The Americans used a former republic in the Soviet empire as a means to exhaust, subvert and undermine the Russians, not to mention working with ex-Nazis in this self-same pursuit. (All sacrificed for minerals and money, just like oil).

Rumour has it, according to RFK Jr., that there are American biowarfare research centers in Ukraine (can’t imagine ‘why’) and ex-CIA man Larry Johnson says there are more CIA bases in Ukraine than in Afghanistan, or even during the Vietnam War.

A Texan plot is another stroke of analytic genius; a tongue-in-cheek reference to JFK slaying? The makeshift general is so anti-Communist he thinks the Reds have polluted the air on the East Coast to brainwash the Washington elite into accommodating during the Cold War.

You can imagine what general Midwinter (sounds like ‘Midjourney’ AI image generator) thinks of Europeans, including old Harry.

BIPOLAR SYNDROME: Ed Begley as the infamous General Midwinter. There's nothing like a fanatic to turn the Washington ice age into a Texan thermonuclear inferno.

The man is portrayed like a Nazi, down to the eagle symbol he uses as a banner for his shock troops, young Texans meant to breed a new ruling class (two-by-two), burning symbols of Soviet accomplishments in KKK fashion – portraits of Yuri Gagarin.

The general dresses up like General Patton at the end, describes his troops as crusaders, and leads the charge into Lithuania himself. (Curiously, the stars on his helmet are not the five-pointed but six-pointed. Hmmm). And his idea of Christian ‘love’ is death during war.

By contrast, the Brits, as always, want to maintain the balance of power, and appreciate the Russians. Hence, KGB Colonel Stok (Oscar Homolka), a teary-eyed man who survived the siege of Leningrad and met Lenin in person.

Russians themselves are also portrayed as hospitable and polite, whereas the smuggler Basil (Milo Sperber), who betrays Harry, literally looks like a rat. Anya betrays the lot of them, but that’s okay, she was Catherine Deneuve’s sister!

Leo is the usually gruff, rough American, self-interested, thoughtful and thoroughly human, played very nicely by the dearly departed Karl Malden. And look at his name, Newbegin. It sounds like a new beginning, and he’s in a relationship with Anya while still married in the US – picking up European habits.

The movie was made in the 1960s. Makes you lament what’s happened to the British moviemaking industry. It was brash and so full of ideas and energy, only to collapse into grimy stiffness since then. The country still ‘mattered’ during the Cold War, reflected in spy stories.

That might explain why the emphasis on the balance of power went downhill after the Cold War. The vulgarity that is Daniel Craig as James Bond, a working-class beefcake with the sentiments of a sociopath.

I came out of the cinema in a state of shock after watching Casino Royale; an American friend described him as a sociopath. Alas, the East Coast in America is no more, with the expansionist populists taking over. And the UK followed suit.

WHITE SHIRTS: General Midwinter (in a black uniform) inspecting his own version of the Hitler Youth. Do I need to mention that the 4th crusade was directed at Constantinople?

I’m no fan of Michael Caine in his early days, but I’d take him over Daniel Craig any day. And British foreign policy back then, too.