Having finished the recent Little Drummer Girl miniseries & enjoyed it well enough, I watched the 1984 movie version again tonight - probably my fifth or sixth time - & still find it brilliant. The miniseries was quite good, no argument, but the movie tells the same story in one third the screen time with no lack of clarity, more intensity & far more vivid characters portrayed by some great actors.
I was floored when I heard somewhere that John Le Carré, the author of the novel, had disliked this movie. Having seen it several times by then, I couldn't imagine what fault he could possibly find with it. In a recent Telegraph review of the miniseries tho, I learned that he'd apparently based the central character, Charlie, on his half sister, actress Charlotte Cornwell, & wanted her to play Charlie. He considered the choice of Diane Keaton "about as silly a piece of casting as you could get." With the greatest of respect for Le Carré, I have to say he was dead wrong; Keaton was marvelous! Brash, vulnerable, bright, romantic, courageous, a superb performance.
The plotline remains wonderfully true to the book & so is the casting. Klaus Kinski as Kurtz, the man in charge of the op, is described in the novel as "...a broad-headed bustling veteran of every battle since Thermopylae, age between forty and ninety, squat and Slav and strong, and far more European than Hebrew, with a barrel chest and a wrestler's wide stride and a way of putting everyone at his ease..." It's like Le Carré wrote it with Kinski in mind.
Little Drummer Girl is an all-time great film. I'd have loved it even if I'd never read the book. Having read the book, I love it all the more. It brings a great book alive in a way few films ever achieve.
I was floored when I heard somewhere that John Le Carré, the author of the novel, had disliked this movie. Having seen it several times by then, I couldn't imagine what fault he could possibly find with it. In a recent Telegraph review of the miniseries tho, I learned that he'd apparently based the central character, Charlie, on his half sister, actress Charlotte Cornwell, & wanted her to play Charlie. He considered the choice of Diane Keaton "about as silly a piece of casting as you could get." With the greatest of respect for Le Carré, I have to say he was dead wrong; Keaton was marvelous! Brash, vulnerable, bright, romantic, courageous, a superb performance.
The plotline remains wonderfully true to the book & so is the casting. Klaus Kinski as Kurtz, the man in charge of the op, is described in the novel as "...a broad-headed bustling veteran of every battle since Thermopylae, age between forty and ninety, squat and Slav and strong, and far more European than Hebrew, with a barrel chest and a wrestler's wide stride and a way of putting everyone at his ease..." It's like Le Carré wrote it with Kinski in mind.
Little Drummer Girl is an all-time great film. I'd have loved it even if I'd never read the book. Having read the book, I love it all the more. It brings a great book alive in a way few films ever achieve.