The Pigeon Tunnel, on Apple TV+

It is not so hard to figure out where David Cornwell, the spy novelist known as “John le Carre,” got his ideas. British intelligence posted him to West Berlin during the time the Berlin Wall was built and Kim Philby fled to the Soviet Union. He was also the son of a conman. Before his death in 2020, le Carre sat down for several long, relentlessly candid interviews that Errol Morris shaped into The Pigeon Tunnel, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+.

Many times, le Carre used “The Pigeon Tunnel” as a working title for his novels, but it finally stuck for his memoirs (which Morris sort of adapted). It refers to the pigeons used as live skeet targets at a Monte Carlo casino the young Cornwell visited with his degenerate father. Morris is just as obsessed with the pigeon imagery as le Carre was, if not more so judging from how often it appears in the doc.

Pigeon Tunnel is definitely a very Morris-ish doc, but it stylistically and thematically suits his subject, who wrote about deceit after experiencing it first-hand. Le Carre/Cornwell clearly expresses his expectation that the film would serve as a final testament or summation, so his answers are always brutally honest, even when things are still a bit ambiguous in his own mind.

For le Carre fans and critics, Pigeon Tunnel will be a terrific resource. He confirms Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor is largely inspired by Philby, which everybody always largely assumed. However, it deepens our understanding of the morality of his novels and worldview. Terms like le Carre-esque have been used to suggest a moral equivalence between the NATO-West and the Soviets, but that now seems like an inaccurate, or at least incomplete assessment of his ideology.

He remains blisteringly critical of his former employers at MI5 and MI6, but that is understandable, considering he lived through the Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess debacles. However, he openly expresses anger and contempt for Philby, for his betrayal, even at his advanced age. It is complicated for le Carre, who acknowledges he would have been a prime candidate for Soviet recruitment. Yet, the atrocities of Stalin, whom the Cambridge spies initially served, represents a point of moral clarity for the writer, or so we can interpret from his sit-downs with Morris. He was similarly appalled by the Berlin Wall.

NYFF ’16: The B-Side—Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography

Remember how James Garner and Mariette Hartley used to explain how there was “a little piece of the sun” in each Polaroid camera? Elsa Dorfman was using an unusually large piece. For years, she was one of a handful of artists using a limited large format 20x24 Polaroid camera. She was usually relegated to the lower ranks of galleriable photographers, even among Polaroid artists. However, just as her critical stock started to rise, Polaroid discontinued its film production. The now retired artist takes stock of her life and work with her friend and documentarian Errol Morris in The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, which screens during the 54th New York Film Festival.

Dorfman came and went from New York fairly quickly, but she was around long enough to witness several salvos in the culture wars working for Barney Rosset at Grove Press. Through her colleagues’ literary publishing circles, she befriended several of the Beats, including lifelong friend and frequent model Allan Ginsburg. Initially, photography was almost thrust upon her, but she found she had an aesthetic affinity for Polaroid film. With her large format camera, she specialized in full-body portraiture. Many famous people and average everymen sat for her, but some of her favorite shots are the quirkily revealing rejects—her so-called “B-Sides.”

It is rather pleasant spending seventy-some minutes with Dorfman and the concerns she expresses regarding the disposal of her archive for posterity (evidently a problem many just-famous-enough photographers her age share) gives one pause. However, this just does not feel like an Errol Morris documentary. It is not because of the relatively upbeat tone. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is a wonderfully charming film, but it clearly bears his stamp as a doc auteur. Frankly, B-Side could have been made by any competent filmmaker with a camera.

One could argue that as an old customer and pal, Morris put Dorfman at ease and encouraged her to speak freely. That’s fair enough as far as it goes. Still, as nice as it is, the final product is undeniable on the slight side of the spectrum of cinematic significance. Most viewers can safely wait until PBS broadcasts it or Fandor (or someone else) streams it. For diehard Morris and Dorfman fans, The B-Sides screens October 9^th, 10^th, 12^th, and 16^th as part of this year’s NYFF.

Errol Morris Gets Scandalous: Tabloid

It was a time when sensationalistic crimes of passion were so much more innocent. Joyce McKinney steadfastly insists she always acted like a proper young woman during her English sojourn, even when evidence of her lurid past came to light. Regardless of her Clintonesque definitions of propriety, it is safe to say McKinney is kind of a nut. Her love and madness become indistinguishable in Errol Morris’s gleefully sensationalistic new documentary Tabloid (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

As the 1972 Miss World-Wyoming with a genius level IQ, McKinney should have had her pick of men. For some reason, perhaps his upright upbringing, she chose Kirk Anderson, a rather doughy looking Mormon. One would have thought the schlubby guy would have been thrilled be involved with a former beauty queen, but it seems Anderson picked up on something in McKinney so unsettling, he up and left on his British missionary trip without a word of warning. However, as a young red-blooded American woman, McKinney was not about to let a few trivialities like an ocean and unequivocal rejection stand between her and her man.

In what became the crime of the century of the 1970’s, McKinney and her loyal co-conspirator Keith May stalked and abducted Anderson, so she could chain him up and whisper sweet nothings in his ear. Apparently, Anderson was allowed to freely walk away from the bizarre captivity, but he has since shunned all publicity, including Morris’s interview requests, so many of the details remain hazy. However, the story really started getting weird once the British press dug into her case. She even sparked rivalry between tabloids, with one hyping her as-told-to story, while another dug up a treasure trove of Betty Page-esque photos that McKinney argues are not necessarily untoward (but perhaps a tad embarrassing). She even has a final epilogue of oddness that fittingly caps Morris’s epic of eccentricity.

In a wildly entertaining return to form, Morris embraces the sensationalism of McKinney’s story (how can you not?), yet it still bears all the hallmarks of his signature style of documentary filmmaking (sans the reenactment sequences, a la The Thin Blue Line). He also scored access to McKinney, the legend herself, as well as sleuthing out some truly tripped out footage of the scandal sheet heroine.

Coming across pretty much like the loon you would expect (albeit an undeniably intelligent one), McKinney is a talking head like no other. Her Pollyannish persona (whether it be genuine or affected who the heck knows?) is nicely counterbalanced by Morris’s other interview subjects, specifically the acerbic Mirror photographer Kevin Gant, who certainly fleshes out the portrait of McKinney, so to speak.

While it might be tempting to tie McKinney’s story into the recent scandals within the British tabloid press, Morris’s film does not need the apologetic justification of relevancy. Like his near-perfect Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, Tabloid is a celebration of eccentricity, even when it manifests itself in dark misguided ways, as is so obviously the case with McKinney. Devilishly clever and enormously satisfying, Tabloid is a subversive blast. Highly recommended, it opens this Friday (7/15) in New York at the IFC Center.