Blunt (1985) (TV)

Director:

John Glenister

Writer:

Robin Chapman (writer)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

The story of Anthony Blunt, the "fourth man" in a notorious 1951 spy scandal. |

Plot Keywords:

Scandal | Defector | Docudrama | Cold War | Partner

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Ian Richardson	...	Anthony Blunt
Anthony Hopkins	...	Guy Burgess
Michael Williams	...	Goronwy Rees
Rosie Kerslake	...	Margie Rees
Emma Cottrell	...	Rees' Child
Casey Doy	...	Rees' Child
Geoffrey Chater	...	Guy Liddell
Albert Welling	...	Vasily
Michael McStay	...	Donald MacLean
John Rapley	...	Postman
Graham Hoadly	...	Jimmy
Mark Elwes	...	Equerry
Christopher Denham	...	Chauffeur
David Goodwin	...	Footman
Tony Scott	...	Commissionaire

Also Known As:

Blunt, the Fourth Man

Runtime:

Argentina:86 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Argentina:13

Company:

A&E Television Networks

The Blunt Truth

Back in the late 1940's the FBI detected that there was a Soviet spy in the British Embassy in Washington D.C but could only narrow him down to a half dozen high ranking members of the British Foreign Service or MI5. It wasn't until 1949 that the spy code name "Homer" was identified as being Donald MacLean, Michael McStay. The FBI, together with the British Government, set a trap to not just arrest MacLean but those who he was in contact and working with in the British Isles. It's there where the movie "Blunt" begins, in late May 1951.

Knowing that one of his fellow classmate's in Cambridge is about to be picked by the police and may very well implicate him as well as his friends as Soviet spy's Art Historian and former MI5 agent Anthony Blunt, Ian Richardson, plans to have Maclean shipped out of the country into the Soviet Union and has fellow spy Guy Burgess, Anthony Hopkins, assigned to do the job. It turns out that Burgess, a drunken and irresponsible party goer, not only got MacLean out of the UK and into the USSR but he joined him as well against the orders of his boss Blunt. This put's suspicion on Blunt with two of his closest friends jumping ship to the USSR as spy's and him not, or faking,knowing anything about their past espionage activities.

Were left with Blunt now at the mercy of his friend and fellow spy who's, or claims, been out of the spying business since August 1939, after the signing of the Nazi/Soviet non-Aggression Pact. Incidentally Goronwy Rees played by actor Michael Williams looks strikingly like a young Edward G. Robinson. Rees who's married and has two children doesn't want anything to do with Blunt & Co. but his friendship with Blunt puts him in arms way. Trying to keep the secret of Blunt from his wife Margie, Rosie Kenslake,backfires when, not being able to lie to her, Rees spills the beans on his fellow Cambridge spy putting Blunt as well as himself in danger of ending up at the end of the British hangman's rope.

It's right at the beginning of the movie that we learn that Blunt got away Scott free and lived to die of old age ,in 1983, even though the British MI5 exposed him as a Sovet spy as early as 1964. The shocking truth about Blunt came out fifteen years later, in 1979, almost causing the fall of British PM Margarte Tatcher's, who went public with the story, administration.

Burgess & Maclean died in exile in the USSR and what seemed like the innocent Goronway Rees,who was never arrested for the crimes of his fellow Cambridge alumni, died in 1979 after giving a death-bed confession. Rees confessed that he indeed was a spy for the Russians all the twelve years, 1939-1951, that he claimed that he was out of the loop and not involved with the spying of the infamous Cambridge Five: Blunt Burgess Liddell MacLean and the most slippery and dangerous of them all Kim Philby.