The Human Factor

The Human Factor (1979)

Every man in love is a potential traitor.

When a leak of information in the African section of British Intelligence is discovered, a security man is brought in to investigate.

Date of release
1979-12-18
TMDB
5.8 / 10 (33)
Runtime
1h 55m
Genres
Thriller
Director
Otto Preminger

Casting

Interesting facts

The Human Factor is a 1979 British neo-noir film starring Nicol Williamson, Robert Morley, and Richard Attenborough, and directed and produced by Otto Preminger. The screenplay is by Tom Stoppard, based on the 1978 novel The Human Factor by Graham Greene. It examines British espionage, and the difficulty of identifying a mole in the ranks of an intelligence service.

Production

The film was shot in Kenya and at Shepperton and Pinewood Studios near London, as well as on location at Berkhamsted. As with the book, much of the theme about alleged treason and suspicion is based on the defection of Kim Philby, a friend of Graham Greene, to the Soviets. Iman, an internationally known model, was introduced as an actress in the picture's opening credits.

Preminger had trouble securing funding for the picture and had to partially finance it with his own money. According to The Daily Telegraph obituary of casting director Rose Tobias Shaw, Preminger wanted to cast the novelist Jeffrey Archer in the role eventually played by Nicol Williamson. Archer, however, was much shorter than the 5-foot-9-inch (1.75 m) Iman, and failed his audition.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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