Ring of Spies

No need to repeat the background to the actual case that inspired this excellent spy thriller. Compared to the ludicrous heroics and wild SFX of Bond, Bourne or Mission Impossible, Ring Of Spies seems like a different planet. But this was an era when the West faced a different sort of opponent (even if the the three threat was exaggerated to one degree or another). Security breaches had occurred before Portland, and would feature again afterwards, but never had the shadow of the enemy spy felt so close to suburbia and the Home Counties. Although long forgotten now, perhaps only Profumo overtook Portland in terms of (the then) public conscious.

The cast are uniformly good, a real effort is made to dig out (but not condone) Bernard Lee's cash strapped wheeler dealer clerk, and his infatuated spinster girlfriend. William Slyvester excels as the smooth talking professional operating under a Soviet 'legend'. The action takes place in rustic pubs, cafes, drab offices and snack bars - there's no glamour or gadgets in this slow burner, Cold War thriller.

Cinéphiles could be forgiven for never having heard of Robert Tronson as he is mainly known for his work on the small screen but with a limited budget and without the customarily dramatic score, he has done a pretty good job here and uses the understated, docudrama treatment to great effect. There is nothing in the least glamorous about the activities of the infamous five members of the Portland spy ring and you certainly won't catch any of the cast 'acting'.

It is said to be based on factual events but this is true only up to a point. Harry Houghton was far from being the amiable boozer played so superbly by Bernard Lee but was in fact a seedy, scurrilous individual who would peddle anything for money and who beat up his wife. Her character is completely absent from the film which is an oversight as she it was who wrote three letters to the Admiralty alerting them that her husband was divulging secret information for cash. Through a combination of misogyny and sheer incompetence her letters were dismissed by MI5 as the ravings of a jealous and disgruntled wife. Likewise, suspicions of Houghton and his partner Elisabeth Gee were not aroused by their so-called extravagant lifestyle but by a tip off from a Polish spy that there was a 'mole' in the Admiralty named Horton or thereabouts. This episode has been completely omitted which further robs the film of dramatic effect. It is entirely possible that writers Launder and Barnes were hamstrung by legal constraints and one can only afford them the benefit of the doubt. The film is not without ironic Anglo-Saxon humour with two female intelligence officers dressed as nuns and Houghton, Gee and their contact Lonsdale obliged to stand for the National Anthem.

The location work is excellent even down to the house in Ruislip where the Cohens, alias the Krogers, conducted their traitorous activities. There is a convincing performance by William Sylvester as Konon Molody, alias Gordon Lonsdale whose slick persona provides a perfect cover and who succeeds in convincing the naive Gee that she is spying for the Americans! She is played by Margaret Tyzack and she is so good in this that one wonders why better film parts did not come her way.

Ironically, although Houghton and Gee received the shortest sentences of the five, they ended up serving the longest terms as the other three were all released as part of an exchange deal with the Soviets. All three achieved the dubious distinction of appearing on Soviet postage stamps. By all accounts Molody was unhappy in Russia and died in mysterious circumstances so in his case the punishment fitted the crime.

Where the film is spot on is in depicting the lamentable lack of security at the Underwater Weapons Establishment and the deep affection between Houghton and Gee who were married on their release from prison.

As for the film, its release was delayed for 'legal reasons' and limited for fear of prosecution. One can only assume that the verbose and faintly ludicrous disclaimer at the end is a classic piece of ****covering designed to deter potential lawsuits.

A British spy thriller; A story about a British navy clerk assigned to a top secret research facility where he is blackmailed into stealing vital secrets in exchange for cash. A film set during the height of the Cold War and based on true events of the Portland Spy Ring, where daily duels play out between Soviet intelligence and British counter-espionage. Tension is undermined by a docudrama style, though the playout of the espionage activities is absorbing. Bernard Lee performs well, but his character is not sympathetic, and his cohort, played by Margaret Tyzack, is also drawn to things venal without much struggle, so it ends up being a drawn-out morality tale.

Based on true facts, the plot narrates without many embellishments, frills and thrills the downfall of Henry Houghton an alcoholic Navy Clerk.

After having been sent back to England in disgrace, from his post at the British Embassy in Warsaw, Houghton decides to take revenge and sell military secrets to Lonsdale, a man he believes to be an American agent.

Lonsdale is actually a Russian spy, connected with a couple of minor key players also located in London. The last member of the ring is Elizabeth Gee, a spinster secretary convinced by Houghton to collaborate with him in exchange for substantial payments that afford some luxuries to the couple.

It is exactly the more affluent lifestyle to raise suspicions and get the Houghton/Gee couple under surveillance. Way more believable than any James Bond story.

"Ring of spies" is a sober but faithful reconstruction in documentary style of the events surrounding the British "Portland Spy Ring". On January 7th 1961, 5 people were arrested in London in connection with espionage activities in the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment in Portland. It was the first major success against a spy network in the UK. It also remains a case which is still today shrouded in a lot of mystery.

Spider in the Portland web was Konon T. Molody, who took the alias of "Gordon Lonsdale". As a facade, this Russian spy posed as a Canadian businessman, renting jukeboxes, bubblegum and gambling machines. This cover allowed him to travel extensively without raising suspicion. Being full of pep, having good looks, lots of cash and a shiny Studebaker, he had lots of beautiful girlfriends attending his cocktail parties. However, behind his "olé olé" facade, he was a skillful KGB-agent, well trained to handle special photographic equipment and to run a spy ring. He was assisted by alias "Peter and Helen Kroger". The Krogers were living in a cozy bungalow at 45 Cranley Drive in the leafy suburb of Ruislip in West-London, posing as sellers of antique books. In reality they were Morris and Lona Cohen, two veteran communist agents, who had previously been involved in the Rosenberg spy case. They managed to slip through the holes of the FBI dragnet, and established themselves under a new -false- identity in the UK. It is interesting to point out that the Ruislip bungalow was situated nearby a US Air Force base. The "Krogers" were responsible to send the material Lonsdale brought to them to Moscow. That material came from two civilians working at Portland, Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee.

Houghton was a staff member of the naval attaché of the British Embassy in Poland in 1951. Already at that time, attracted by easy cash, he was involved in illegal activities, including in black market operations. Starting innocently with coffee, he turned to lucrative medical drugs, a bit like Harry Lime in the "Third Man". He needed the money for entertaining a girlfriend and for his heavy drinking. This vulnerability made him an interesting target for the Polish secret police UB. However, their new asset spoiled it all, by causing outrage during a party at the Embassy in 1952.

This is the starting point of "Ring of spies". After this incident, Houghton is send back to the UK. Although his drinking habits made him a security risk, he gets cleared for a job in the secret Portland facility, specialized in submarine warfare. Pure mismanagement ? Made possible thanks to the intervention of a sufficiently high ranking British civil servant with ties to the Soviets ? Things become even stranger, when somewhere in 1955 or '56, Houghton's wife introduced a complaint against her husband. She told the authorities that her husband brought secret documents to his home. After a rather sloppy investigation (?), the accusation was brushed aside as being unfounded, merely the result of the frustrations of a woman badly treated by her husband. In 1956 she divorced him, and Harry's money problems started again. This led him to move to a small caravan. Probably in the same year, agents from the Eastern Bloc contacted him again, and offered him cash in exchange for secret papers. With the help of his colleague Ethel Gee, he's soon able to move to a nice house and to buy a car, making exactly the same mistakes as Aldrich Ames (see "Traitor within") many years later.

Peter Wright describes in his controversial book "Spy Catcher" how the revelations of a Polish source dubbed "Sniper" helped the British and Americans to identify Houghton, than to pick up the trail that led to Lonsdale and the Krogers. The British had to be particularly careful not to scare off professionals such as Lonsdale or the Krogers. Therefor, it is interesting to combine watching "Ring of spies" with the 1987 movie "A pack of lies". To quote Writerasfilmcritic, who wrote an excellent comment for IMDb about it : "Pack of Lies" is a very interesting drama (about) MI5 agents, led by Alan Bates as "Stuart", (who) skillfully manipulates a well-intentioned British family into believing that they are merely police on a routine investigation who need to use their home (...) "just for the weekend", in order to surveil a suspect who has been tracked into their neighborhood. (End quotation)

POL depicts how MI5 sets up a surveillance in the Ruislip home of Bill and Ruth Search, who happened to live just across the Krogers. The presence of the MI5 agents is soon causing tremendous stress for the Searches,especially for the shy Ruth, who only has one real friend… Helen Kroger! (In POL she looks more flamboyant as the real one)

The defection of "Sniper" to the West, accelerated the arrests of the Portland Spy Ring. Interestingly, Peter Wright is convinced that Moscow knew that Lonsdale had been identified by MI5, but willingly sacrificed him to protect a super-mole within the British intelligence community. Someone within MI5 or 6 who told Moscow all about the progress in the counter-espionage effort against the Portland Spy Ring.

Both Lonsdale and the Krogers received long term prison sentences, but were released a few years later, in exchanged for a British spy. And even this sordid affair had a little bit of fairy tale-quality, as Houghton and Gee married, once they got released from prison.