Smiley says…
“Moscow rules, Donald old boy, Moscow rules. Copy then burn the original. All folders go in the burn bag too. Don’t want the Americans to think we are chumps, do we?”
I had something to do with documents at a similar level in an earlier job. At the end of the day, all classified documents went into the safe. You might re-use a classified folder to put another classified document in, but you would not leave it out of the safe, even if it was empty. If you stamped ‘TOP SECRET’ on a blank piece of paper to make sure the stamp was working, you shredded the paper. If you did this and kept your desk tidy, you could not leave anything classified on your desk by accident.
I mean, even at a municipal level. I used to ride a sheriff’s dispatch desk for a few months, and everything you printed was shredded at the end of your shift.
Well, there we have it. See, the contents of the folders were all properly destroyed, but then there were all these leftover folders sitting around in the recycling bin, and rather than let perfectly-good folders go to waste, he decided to bring them home and re-use them there rather than buying a whole box of brand-new folders. An environmental hero. Clearly.
I like what Oldman did with the character, and thought his physical acting was brilliant in creating a “disappearing man” character. Oldman’s got a pretty distinctive face, and he was able to “find his dark” (opposite of how actors are trained to “find their light”) in a way that made me forget what he looked like while I was looking at him. Noice.
But if I had to pick one for a prolonged deserted island stay: the BBC version wins, of course.
Richardson was a great Anthony Blunt in “Blunt”, alongside Anthony Hopkins as Guy Burgess. Not quite as good as James Fox playing Blunt in “A question of attribution” (with Prunella Scales as the Queen), but still fun.
