Sir Tom Stoppard, an admirer of Graham Greene’s work, jumped at the chance to write the screenplay for The Human Factor (1979) from what Greene once described as “a novel of espionage free from the violence which has not, in spite of James Bond, been a feature of the British secret service”.
Unfortunately, the resulting film turned out to be a disaster - artistically, technically and logistically, not least because extreme budgetary restraints constantly hampered the production, much of which was filmed in and around Greene’s home town of Berkhamsted.
As Stoppard would later tell me in an interview for my book, Travels in Greeneland: The Cinema of Graham Greene, “you could see its bankruptcy all over the screen”.
Stoppard’s screenplay was remarkably faithful to Greene’s original, apart from a scene he said he had particularly enjoyed writing, which gave a wink to 007.
One of the characters is bemoaning the fact he never goes to the cinema: “Ian [Fleming] took me to one of his once. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it – fella kept killing people with gadgets and being kissed by amazing-looking girls who then tried to kill him – and all the time he was trying to save the world from some foreigner in a submarine I think it was.”
That scene would, sadly, remain on the cutting room floor.
