The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973)

Directed by

Ivan Dixon

Genre

spy film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 42m

Rated

PG

Rating

6.3 of 10 from 33 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A Black man joins the CIA as a token hire. He becomes disillusioned and secretly trains young people in Chicago to form a militant resistance. The film shows how he uses his skills against the agency.

satiricaltensebleakempoweringcalculateddefiantgrimsuspenseful

What happens

The Spook Who Sat by the Door is a 1973 action crime–drama film based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Sam Greenlee. It is both a satire of the civil rights struggle in the United States of the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of Black militancy. Dan Freeman, the titular protagonist, is enlisted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its elitist espionage program, becoming its token Black person. After mastering agency tactics, however, he becomes disillusioned and drops out to train young Black people in Chicago to become "Freedom Fighters". As a story of one man's reaction to white ruling-class hypocrisy, the film is loosely autobiographical and personal. The novel and the film also dramatize the CIA's history of giving training to persons and/or groups who later utilize their specialized intelligence training against the agency – an example of "blowback." Directed by Ivan Dixon, co-produced by Dixon and author Greenlee, from a screenplay written by Greenlee with Mel Clay (a former member of The Living Theatre), the film starred Lawrence Cook, Paula Kelly, Janet League, J. A. Preston, and David Lemieux. It was mostly shot in Gary, Indiana, because the themes of racial strife did not please Chicago's then-mayor Richard J. Daley. The film's soundtrack was an original score composed by Herbie Hancock, who grew up in the same neighborhood as author Sam Greenlee. In 2012, the film was added to the National Film Registry, which annually chooses 25 films that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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