EMMETT Of The Unblinking Eye

TOP 10 SPY MOVIES OF ALL TIME!!!

July 16, 2004

OK, I've been just a little behind in posting this list.  But I have a good excuse -- I lost it.  So I not only had to re-create it, which involved work, but I had to wait long enough from the original broadcast so that no one -- including me -- would remember what was on the original list.  That having been accomplished, here is the new, improved list of the Top 10 Spy Movies Ever!!.

	10.	Stalag 17 (1953): I don't care what Mr. Hewitt says, this is too a spy movie. And a fine one at that. William Holden heads an outstanding cast in this classic Billy Wilder prisoner of war yarn.
	9.	The Conversation (1974): A different kind of spy yarn, with Gene Hackman (in what is supposedly his favorite role) starring as an isolated man who earns his living by eavesdropping on the conversations of others.
	8	Notorious (1946): I'm sure there has been a bad Cary Grant-Ingrid Bergman movie, but I sure can't think of it. Here she plays a woman asked by a government agent (Grant) to spy on a group of Nazis in South America. A fine old film.
	7	Three Days of the Condor (1975): Robert Redford plays a bookish CIA employee who finds that everyone in his office has been killed -- except him. This is a bad sign. But it's a fine movie.
	6	North by Northwest (1959): This time Cary Grant plays an advertising executive mistaken for a spy. No Ingrid Bergman this time, but Eva Marie Saint will do.
	5	Quiller Memorandum (1966): Don't let the fact that George Segal stars scare you away; it's the script, written by Harold Pinter, that makes this movie so worthy to view
	4	Eye of the Needle (1981): One of my all-time favorites. Donald Sutherland and Kate Nelligan are very effective as a German spy and the lonely wife of a crippled husband on a remote island in Britain.
	3	The 39 Steps (1935): One of the best Hitchcock films, and the third Hitchcock spy movie on this list. Robert Donat stars as a man visiting London who is swept up in a counterespionage plot and must try to prove his innocence. If this plot seems familiar, that's because it's been copied often by other movies. But this was the first.
	2	The Ipcress File (1965): Michael Caine plays Sgt. Harry Palmer in this intricate spy tale about the kidnapping and brainwashing of British scientists.
	1	From Russia With Love (1963): Oh, come on, you knew there'd have to be a Bond movie in here somewhere, didn't you? This is my all-time favorite, primarily because of Robert Shaw as the Russian agent and Lotte Lenya (remember the song "Mack the Knife"?) as Rosa Klebb. One of the great dying scenes ever.

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