My favourite part of the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold comes at the denouement. Once the viewer has had the rug pulled, Alec Leamas -- played masterfully by Richard Burton -- confesses everything to Nan, the kindhearted librarian and ideologically pure Communist he used to troll the Russians and with whom he's fallen in love. She's trying to make sense of everything that's happened and he makes no attempt to sugar-coat the ugly, crass, venality of it all:

"What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives."