The Human Factor (1979 film) - Alchetron, the free social encyclopedia (2025)

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The Human Factor is a 1979 British thriller film starring Richard Attenborough, Nicol Williamson, Derek Jacobi, and John Gielgud. It is based on the 1978 novel The Human Factor by Graham Greene, with the screenplay written by Tom Stoppard. It examined British espionage, and the West's relationship with apartheid South Africa.

Plot

Maurice Castle (Nicol Williamson) is a mid-level bureaucrat in MI6 whose life seems completely without peculiarity, peccadillo, or any quality to suggest he’s anything but a dull bureaucrat, except for the interesting, casually introduced detail that he has an African wife, Sarah (Iman), and son, Sam (Gary Forbes). Meanwhile, the company regime, represented by corpulent, bluffly cheery Dr. Percival (Robert Morley), who’s actually an expert in assassinations and biological toxins, and eminence gris, Sir John Hargreaves (Richard Vernon), advise newly appointed security chieftain Daintry (Richard Attenborough), they believe they have a traitor at the MI6 African desk. The duo determine the mole must be quietly killed, rather than be allowed publicity in a trial or a flight to Moscow. They determine quickly the most likely candidate for the traitor is Arthur Davis (Derek Jacobi), Castle’s playboy office partner.

In actually, Castle is the mole, but the information he leaks is entirely unimportant financial documents. He became involved in leaking to the Soviets when he was an MI6 agent in South Africa, seven years earlier: he met and fell in love with Sarah, and when their affair was discovered by the authorities, Castle was all but thrown out of the country, and he entrusted Sarah’s smuggling out of the country to a mutual communist acquaintance. Ever since, he’s been repaying the favor by filtering insignificant data to the Soviets. Castle makes one last informational drop to his communist handlers and is summarily whisked off to Moscow for protection. However, Castle's primary problem is he is not a communist, nor a sympathizer, if any kind. His only interest is in his wife and son, who are left in London — where they remain separated from him.

Cast

Production

The film was shot in Kenya and at Shepperton Studios near London. As with the book, much of the theme about alleged treason and suspicion are based on the defection of Kim Philby, a friend of Graham Greene, to the Soviets. The movie also introduced Iman, who was working as a model before she began to work in movies.

Preminger had trouble securing funding for the film and had to partially fund it with his own money. Reportedly, Preminger wanted to cast the novelist Jeffrey Archer in the role played by Nicol Williamson. Archer, much shorter than Iman, failed his audition.