The Human Factor (1979) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by pirateneckbeard ★★★★ 7

  Dang this is actually a really solid little espionage film working with a different narrative using more of a domestic approach to the material and something that is more aligned to what probably most spy life is and the lines of duty and family get severed leaving individuals dangling in a void while the powers that be seem to exchange pawn pieces on the board. Otto Preminger's final film and yes it lacks some of the fanfare of some of his over exuberant past material but it really connects with it's candid dry plot written by the great Graham Greene and adapted in equal stature by Tom Stoppard. It's far from uplifting but has a dark condemnation that I found engaging and poignant.

• Review by Bruno Amato Reame ★★★★★

  It is an espionage film mostly confined to workings desks belonging to unglamorous bureaucrats (none of whom resemble James Bond) hunting a mole inside the British Intelligence. Preminger's final film is perhaps also his most rigorous and concise. In fact, one of the characters describes life as "boxes on top of boxes" and that's a good description of the movie's visual style. All characters seem contaminated by the dull, unimpressive backgrounds where they work and live. This seems to include the protagonist at first glance but we slowly realize that he is the most humane person around (even his reasons to betray the British Intelligence to the soviets are understandable, perhaps admirable).Preminger’s direction in The Human Factor reaches an inevitable conclusion, and an haunting final shot: the saddest image of a telephone ever filmed, as the last remains of human emotion in this cold war world are left hanging by a thread.

• Review by FakeVoorhees ★★½

  "I haven't had a Malteser in donkey's years."

  A spy movie where there's not much spying, and not much of anything else really. There's a heavy focus on the mundane aspects of a spy's life including his family life, a visit to the doctor, a night out on the town with coworkers, and multiple discussions about Maltesers. There's a mid-movie flashback to how a spy met his wife that goes on for way too long. The entire plot plays out over long, drawn out conversations. It's not a poorly made film but it's not a very interesting one either.

• Review by Bruno Andrade ★★★★ 3

  Por muito tempo, o objeto desempenhou um papel naqueles momentos em que o ator excedeu o contorno da personagem. Folha de papel amassada, telefone, disco. Preminger engendrava semear objetos sob os passos de suas personagens para despertá-las de seus choques, e que um impedimento da matéria respondia à abstração de seus itinerários. - Philippe Demonsablon, L'oiseleur inspiré, 10 anos após Preminger realizar Angel Face, 17 anos antes dele realizar The Human Factor

• Review by Diogo Serafim ★★★★½

  'We have our own country, you and I and Sam, and I know you would never betray that'.

  The smallest collective may be the individual, but the only solution in this world for someone who chooses love over ideology is desolating loneliness. Preminger takes a radical deviation from what you would primarily expect from a spy film, making profit of his patient mise-en-scène, establishing a very simple, almost bureaucratic exploration of space through flat pacing, managing to achieve great dramatic emphasis from its clearness when it means to. Unbelievably beautiful.

• Review by r_emmet ★★★★

  "The dullest movie ever made." -Rex Reed

• Review by Krommedijk ★★★½

  Joop Doderer was a Dutch actor, well-known for the tv-series Swiebertje - about a wanderer with a golden heart, assisted by the help of a mayor and often on the run from the local police officer. Swiebertje ran from 1955 to 1975, making memories for generations of children. Doderer was an underappreciated actor. He knew his Shakespeare, his comedies on stage were - at that time - hilarious and he did everything to be taken seriously, just take a look at Moord in Extase and Hoogste Tijd. He also worked with acclaimed Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove. However, I never knew that he played in a film directed by Otto Preminger, let alone Preminger's last one.

  The Human Factor…

• Review by Miguel Marías

  (...)
  Un hecho sintomático: cuando en la Filmoteca Nacional se pasa un viejo film de cualquiera de los grandes cineastas descubiertos por los Cahiers, de los que los cinéfilos de hace quince o veinte años hemos visto muchas veces, pero la última hace ya muchos años, solemos encontrarnos allí personas que ahora nos vemos muy de tarde en tarde, que en algunos casos se han convertido en directores, que en otros han abandonado la crítica, dispuestos a poner a prueba nuestro entusiasmo de antaño: da más o menos lo mismo que se trate de Vertigoo Marnie de Hitchcock, de The Horse Soldiers, Two Rode Together o The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance de Ford, de Red River o The Big…

• Review by Chris 🍉 ★★★★★

  “Please go on hoping... please”

  Something about these quiet, understated, perhaps even banal spy movies really gets to me. Like the subtle paranoia and the lingering threat that’s never glamorized which, for a viewer like me who quickly gets tired of all the dangerous but ultimately empty threats that typical action movies are littered with, is somehow more enthralling than if there was onscreen violence and killings. Cried a lot too bc god this was terribly depressing... can’t relate to anyone calling this boring I loved every minute of this. Surprised at how anti-imperialist this ended up being as well but I guess that’s to be expected because imperialism goes against everything humane and this is all about the strength of human connection

• Review by James ★★★½

  Otto Preminger's final film sees the envelope pushing director go out more with a whimper than a bang, The Human Factor is a subdued spy thriller that faithfully recreates the downbeat, matter-of-fact tone of the Graham Greene novel it adapts and almost intentionally seems to lack the visual and atmospheric polish of the many prior Greene adaptations.

  This is a visually bland, talky and absolutely no frills late career capstone, Preminger's final statement being daringly counter-intuitive to what we might expect from such a refined master and you could certainly interpret the film as sloppy, dull and uninspiring—the director did run out of money half way through after all, but there's something about this detached sense of calm which pervades…

• Review by Chris ★★★★ 2

  A spy movie told in shades of 70s beige.

  That might seem uninteresting but it isn't. This film doesn't have gun battles or chase scenes. Instead it has phone calls and awkward small talk. Characters don't really fight for survival, they just resign themselves to their fate.

  There's a double agent in the British Secret Service. The double agent leads such a boring life he isn't suspected of committing crimes. But he commits the crimes so he can have that boring life.

  There are great performances by Richard Attenborough, Robert Morely (as a happily amoral doctor), and Nicol Williamson. He is the heart of the film, given an oppourtunity to carry a picture, as subtle and low-key as it is,…

• Review by Adriana Scarpin ★★★

  Último filme de Otto Preminger, roteiro do lendário Tom Stoppard adaptado de um livro de Graham Greene, elenco predominantemente britânico de dar arrepios e de brinde introdução de Saul Bass. Agora me diz, tem alguma forma desse filme dar errado? Tem.
  Os anos 60 e 70 foram povoados por filmes de espionagem britânicos com gente cool como Harry Palmer e James Bond como protagonistas, aí aparece O Fator Humano com uma espionagem totalmente burocrática e, err, chata. Como diz a personagem de Derek Jacobi numa cena do filme: “Eu sou um romântico, vim aqui em busca de segredos atômicos e pistolas”.
  Não é só a burocracia que faz desse filme chato, mesmo porque burocracia é quase sinônimo de realismo em…