I know that the novels are not fond of the people who get promoted in MI6. But wasn't this portrayal of Saul Enderby rather too extreme? Fop. Lush. Smarmy. Unwilling to stand by his actions.
Sprained my credibility, if you know what I mean.
Sir Saul is not the most likeable character to head up the Circus. Connie Sachs sums him up briefly by saying something like, "I wouldn't trust Saul Enderby as far as I could throw him," or some such. By contrast, I found Control in TTSS a rather loveable character, battling against terrible odds including heart disease?
Yes, Sir Saul is immensely shrewd, trusting few and authoritarian to his fingertips. Notice the way he dismisses the elderly gent who wheels in the projector and greets Smiley as a dear colleague. And watch his expression change when Enderby sends him about his business after only a few seconds. An autocratic b****** in my book, but he seems to get on with the girl (Mollie?) rather well.
I wonder if........but that has nothing to do with the original question.
Another questionable aspect of Enderby is when he quizzes Guillam about the state of his marriage. Peter responds "Blissful, sir." Enderby says "Give it three years." Then he nods toward Molly. It's as if he is recommending Molly for an affair when Peter's married life becomes tiresome.
shareHow perceptive! I admit that I hadn't thought of this aspect. Perhaps the shrewd wretch believed in keeping his Department's amours "in house" so to speak. Makes for much tighter security, I suppose.....
shareGuillam and Molly have history.
They played doctors and nurses in The Honourable Schoolboy.
I couldn't disagree more. I regard the scene with Smiley and Enderby to be one of the finest scenes ever to grace British television scenes. Deliberately underlining their differences in approach and character.
The wonderful game of chess in watching Saul trying to get a rise out of Smiley and failing. Smiley not shaking Enderby's hand, but going over to shake the hand of the receptionist bringing in the TV. Enderby's comment about blackmail is genius: "At the current rate of inflation, blackmail's about the only thing that holds its value"
Barry Foster gives a deliciously slick, oily performance as Saul Enderby. It's almost comedy time, but he just holds back from stealing the show as a 'comic' actor might have done. Instead there's a subtle and revealing interplay between him and Smiley that says as much about Smiley's integrity as about Enderby's cynical preening.
shareMaybe it is meant to tell us what Le Carre thinks of the British intelligence establishment in certain years. That character and skill had given way to backstabbing and greed. Seems to me Enderby is sneering at Smiley's integrity, having seen that become a career-ender in postwar British intelligence.
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Is it enterprise or entropy? Ask me again when I wake up.
It's in part Le Carre giving his opinion of the muckety-mucks riding through the organization, based on his own experience with SIS in the 1950s and 1960s before he was mustered out following the exposures of the Cambridge lot (he was essentially Peter Guillam in that part of his life), and in part Le Carre writing about the sort of people who come out of the old school tie/public school strand of English culture, who can equally as well wind up as Tory politicians -- as they're sometimes termed, the Eton Rifles type. Enderby positively reeks of self-serving arrogance, and his dealings with those he perceives as somehow inferior to him are reprehensible -- someone commented above that he seems to ge on with Molly; he doesn't -- she visibly rankles and squirms at his patrician, condescending attitude to her, and he's quite handsy and assumptive regarding her. or him, she's a clever and pretty pet -- whereas Connie Sachs would have bitten his hand off.
Smiley's approach to the twat is to regard him with the air of a weary headmaster regarding an unruly pupil, a method that one-ups Enderby and unmans him for a few moments before he goes back to his bluster. Smiley functionally manages to take over the entire thing while being utterly still and self-co9ntained.
Yeah, I found him fascinating. He was at once boorish and also amusing.
Definitely big contrast points between career administrators (Enderby) and career agents (Smiley).
The scene where they go over the brief in Ep.4 is priceless.
In the books actually, Enderby comes across as being a mildly sympathetic character. True, he conspired against Smiley and replaced him as the Circus head at the end of 'The Honourable Schoolboy'. However, it is also true that his intentions with regards to the Circus were benign, right or wrong, from his POV. We're even told at the start of the book how Enderby has been battling the politicians and bureaucrats who have been trying to undermine the Circus. The fact that Enderby ultimately agrees to sanction Smiley's operation against Karla, deciding that scoring a tangible victory like Karla's defection is far more important for the Circus than political posturing, does paint his character in a somewhat more positive light.
share