Harry Palmer: Michael Caine’s failed James Bond
Spending over 60 years at the forefront of cinematic spycraft has forced the James Bond franchise to constantly reinvent itself in order to remain relevant, most recently when Daniel Craig was drafted in to ensure Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne weren’t on-screen espionage’s most notable Bonds. However, during 007’s early years, Michael Caine served as the grounded and gritty counterpoint to Ian Fleming’s creation.
Released three years after Len Deighton’s novel was published – and arriving in cinemas only eight months before Sean Connery’s fourth outing as Bond in Thunderball – 1965’s The Ipcress File introduced Harry Palmer to the masses, with the bespectacled operative drafted in to solve the disappearance of several notable scientists.
Ironically, Deighton was fired as the writer of From Russia with Love a couple of years beforehand after failing to crack the script, but he was encouraged to sell the rights to his books regardless and then ended up uniting with several 007 veterans on The Ipcress File including producer Harry Saltzman, production designer Ken Adam, editor Peter Hunt, and composer John Barry.
Despite possessing several strands of shared DNA, though, Palmer was deliberately designed to be a counterpoint. Focusing on realism, Caine’s widely acclaimed first outing is regarded as one of the best British films of its era and makes for a refreshing antidote for any fan of the genre who wasn’t won over by the increasingly outlandish and fantastical adventures of Palmer’s martini-swilling rival.
Replicating the Bond saga’s formula at the time of churning out a new instalment annually, Caine would reprise the role of Palmer in Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain in 1966 and 1967, respectively, although neither follow-up would be greeted anywhere near as enthusiastically as its predecessor. The Ipcress File remains a certified classic and one of the best spy films ever made, but the same couldn’t be said for the second and third chapters.
After an absence from screens that stretched almost 30 years, Caine returned to the role in Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg, but not a lot of people know that. Not only was the Palmer series largely irrelevant to audiences of the time period but neither was based on a Leighton book.
Shot back to back and released six months apart on American TV station Showtime in August 1995 and February 1996, it was hardly a widely heralded and much-vaunted return, considering it slipped almost entirely under the radar. In addition, Caine claimed to The Daily Mail that his decision to revisit the role after so long “almost finished me off,” and he ended up actively regretting it after calling “the filming itself a joke.”
That being said, Palmer’s legacy did serve as a major inspiration behind Austin Powers, with Mike Myers’ comedy creation lampooning both the tropes and trappings that influenced Bond and Palmer alike before he brought Caine into Austin Powers in Goldmember as the title hero’s father, Nigel. Michael Petrovich also played the role in 1974’s Spy Story, with Joe Cole headlining a six-episode remake of The Ipcress File in 2022, but the original will always be regarded as the best.
The potential was definitely there for Palmer to rival Bond as his direct antithesis in the 1960s, but the subpar sequels ended up shelving the property for over three decades and allowed it to slip out of the limelight as one of the top-tier secret agent franchises, to the extent that Caine taking top billing as the same character in five spy films spanning 31 years is barely more than a nugget of fascinating trivia today.
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