About five decades ago, a young, real-life MI6 spook named David Cornwell became irritated by the popularity of a certain pulp fictional assassin for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He took the pen name John le Carré, and commenced writing about a world of hard-working, habitually depressed British spies without a license to do much of anything they weren’t specifically ordered to do. Though his first two novels were relatively conventional mysteries, his style quickly evolved into tales that were immensely closer to reality but, in their way, no less brutal than the violent escapades of James Bond. His tendency to blend thriller writing with biting liberal politics continues into his 70s, including his more recent novels-into-films, “The Tailor of Panama” and “The Constant Gardener.”

“The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” is the film version of le Carré’s third, breakthrough novel – not just a great espionage tale, but also one of the great novels of the 20th century. The spy in question is Alec Leamas (Richard Burton), a burned-out hard case recalled to London in disgrace after his last Berlin agent is gunned down within a few feet of the Berlin Wall — one of a series of British spies targeted by the vicious head of East German intelligence, Mundt (Peter van Eyck). Leamas’s code-name-only boss, Control (Cyril Cusack), knows he’s drinking heavily and on the edge of sanity, but he offers Leamas a chance at redemption and revenge. He is to make himself a target for recruitment by East German intelligence, become a double agent, and feed incriminating disinformation to Mundt’s #2, an intellectual Jew named Fiedler (Oskar Werner) who will only too eagerly use the planted evidence to have his ex-Nazi boss shot. Prior to that, however, Leamas must attract the Stasi’s attention by dramatically hitting the skids. While working at the kind of job the English welfare state gives to educated drunks, Leamas meets Nan Perry (Claire Bloom), an idealistic young librarian who ironically enough turns out to be an ardent, card-carrying Communist. The two start up a love affair that turns out to be a lot more than a simple fling.

With a screenplay by Paul Dehn (“Goldfinger,” “Murder on the Orient Express”), a writer with real-life espionage experience of his own, “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” represents some of the best and most purely cinematic work of the great Hollywood left-realist director, Martin Ritt (“Hud,” “The Front” and “Norma Rae”). It is, if anything, harsher and more unrelenting than the book. Le Carré was still a loyal member of Britain’s secret service when he wrote his novel, but director Ritt had few reasons to feel sympathy towards any spy agency of the west or east, and he brings a real sense of outrage to the proceedings. The results are potent enough to make you forget that less realistic movie spies even exist.

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