He was sent to Sherborne public school where he learned to pass as part of Britain’s post-War ruling classes, but the bills went unpaid and his father was frequently in prison. “I was invited to dupe, and I did.” (This will culminate in the film’s conclusion, when Ronnie tries to con his own by-now successful son.) Ronnie was a swindler and young David was often inveigled into his plans. He was in Berlin when the wall went up, working under diplomatic cover having studied modern languages – in particular German – at Oxford, and his precision with words is always in evidence in this film (Morris’s questions seem almost sloppily phrased beside Cornwell’s prepared elegance).Įven that, fascinating though it is, pales in the face of the description of what got him there: the son of a ‘confidence trickster’, the convicted serial conman Ronnie Cornwell, David was abandoned by his mother at the age of five, never to be seen or spoken of again until adulthood, and brought up in a boarding school with cameo roles from a succession of ‘step-mothers’. ’Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ as well as ’Smiley’s People’, and, in part, ’The Honourable Schoolboy’ all deal with the Cambridge spy ring and the bleakness of the Cold War world where, as Le Carre says here, ”both sides invented the enemy they needed”. This is his last, extensive interview and Morris constructs it visually, as if his library was pierced by reflective shards of glass, and thematically, as a duel between interviewer and subject, drawn from Cornwell’s admission that, as a former MI5 and MI6 interrogator, the inquisitor always held all the cards.Ĭornwell always claimed to be a minor cog in the workings of Britain’s declining secret services at the precise time Philby’s betrayal dealt them a death blow. The latest headline is about his repeated infidelities across two marriages but, thankfully, this is not covered here – although Cornwell admits from the outset that betrayal has been the dominant theme in his life. Hardly a week goes by in the UK without some or other revelation in the Sunday newspapers about Cornwell’s private life - his name is catnip to a generation brought up on the Cold War and his books (and later movies and TV series) of spies and tradecraft, from 1963’s ‘The Spy Who Came In From The Cold’ onwards. Morris’s hall of mirrors should figure prominently in awards chatter It deals with familiar ground for Le Carre acolytes, but those new to his game will find all the source material in the extraordinary life and times documented here. Its themes, of duplicity and betrayal, scrape again at the wounds of the Cold War particularly in the UK where the name of Kim Philby is still salt. Set for small-scale theatrical play and streaming on October 20 following a run of festival showcases, Morris’s hall of mirrors should figure prominently in awards chatter. To be released posthumously – Cornwell died in 2020 at the age of 89 – its visual riches speak partially to Morris’s distinctive style, and also to Apple’s deep pockets. It’s rare to see a crew list this extensive on a single-location, talking-head documentary with archive clips: but then again, The Pigeon Tunnel is a collaboration between master writer John LeCarre (or David Cornwell to give him his birth name) and master documentarian Errol Morris ( The Fog Of War) with Phillip Glass scoring for the fourth time since 1988’s The Thin Blue Line.
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