Harry Palmer: The best and worst of Michael Caine in one role
Having spent more than 70 years in front of the camera and played plenty of memorable characters and indelible icons in that time, trying to name the definitive or greatest role ever embodied by Michael Caine is a near-impossible task. That being said, no part encapsulated him better than Harry Palmer.
The bespectacled secret agent epitomised both Caine’s initial rise to superstardom and the nadir of the wilderness years, which saw him contemplate giving up acting altogether, and he also served an important function in a full-circle moment that saw the two-time Academy Award winner embrace his status as an elder statesman and inspirational figure.
As tends to be the case with many multi-film sagas, Palmer peaked in his very first outing. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Len Deighton, The Ipcress File may have been based on pre-existing source material, but it was intentionally designed to be the antithesis to the burgeoning worldwide popularity of another notable espionage operative.
Whereas James Bond travelled the globe and developed a fondness for girls, guns, and gadgets, Palmer was a more unassuming everyman. He wore glasses, he had a cockney accent, he enjoyed cooking in his spare time, with the conspiracy he thwarted and the threat he sought to avert being decidedly smaller in scale than 007’s world-saving antics.
The end result was one of the greatest British films of not only its decade but all time. Ironically, with The Ipcress File proving to be the recipient of such widespread acclaim, it was decreed that Caine would seek to emulate the very spy series he was supposed to be counteracting by headlining a pair of quickfire sequels.
Follow-ups Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain saw the Palmer trilogy release in consecutive years between 1965 and 1967, coinciding with Caine cracking Hollywood when Alfie netted him the first Oscar nomination of his career. The middle chapter was even helmed by four-time Bond director Guy Hamilton, but a noticeable drop-off in quality ensured that the nascent franchise failed to play 007 at his own game.
Fortunately, Caine didn’t need to play a secret agent to thrive, going on to earn another three Oscar nods and his first win for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ by the mid-1980s, after which his star began to fade drastically. Unsure of his place in the industry now that he’d entered middle age, the parts he was accustomed to getting had all but dried up, forcing him to swallow his pride and enter the journeyman phase.
This was the unfortunate period when he co-starred with Steven Seagal in the risible On Deadly Ground, but much more bittersweet were the two Palmer sequels. Shot on location in Russia and starring opposite Jason Connery, the son of his old friend Sean, neither feature was ever going to see the inside of a cinema.
By the 1990s, Caine had been reduced to reprising a once-mighty role from his back catalogue in a pair of made-for-TV movies that failed to make a splash. His worst nightmares had become flesh, with the Oscar-winning veteran now signing on for parts that paid the bills because the ones he actively wanted to play simply weren’t materialising.
1995’s Bullet to Beijing and the following year’s Midnight in Saint Petersburg marked the lowest point of Caine’s professional life, to the point he was ready to walk away from acting. Just in the nick of time, Jack Nicholson convinced him not to abandon all hope, and their collaboration on Blood and Wine lit the touchpaper on a renewed, reinvigorated, and rejuvenated Caine embracing a second lease of life.
He never looked back from that point on, with Palmer indicative of both his meteoric rise and his humbling fall. By the turn of the millennium, the influence of the character became stronger than ever without many people even noticing after Mike Myers used the role as the visual inspiration for an international man of mystery, Austin Powers.
When the comedian needed somebody to play the father of a character inspired by Palmer in third instalment Goldmember, there was only one place he could turn. Caine’s Nigel Powers put the exclamation point on his Palmer association, rounding it out in fitting fashion by taking pride of place among his 21st century resurgence.
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