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The spy who decided to write a book
In Hopscotch, released in 1980 and directed by Ronald Neame, Walter Matthau plays Miles Kendig, a veteran CIA field agent in Europe who has spent decades playing the espionage game by old-fashioned rules: no unnecessary killing, respect for a worthy opponent, and a belief that spying should be a matter of wit rather than brute force. When his new boss, the vindictive Myerson, played by Ned Beatty, decides Kendig is too old, too independent and too friendly with his Soviet counterpart, and sidelines him to a desk job, Kendig does not retire quietly. He resigns, destroys his own CIA file, and announces that he is going to write a memoir exposing all of the agency’s secrets, chapter by chapter, from locations around the world, while the CIA chases him. Matthau plays Kendig as a cheerful, opera-singing trickster, a man having the time of his life outwitting his own employers, and the result is one of his most delightful leading performances.
The film was adapted by Bryan Forbes and Brian Garfield from Garfield’s novel, and director Ronald Neame, a veteran British filmmaker, shapes it as a light, globe-trotting caper rather than a gritty spy thriller. Kendig travels from Austria to England to America, always one step ahead of the CIA agents sent to catch him, including his own protégé Joe Cutter, played by Sam Waterston, who admires Kendig even as he hunts him. Along the way Kendig is helped by his former lover and fellow agent Isobel von Schonenberg, played by Glenda Jackson, reuniting Matthau and Jackson after House Calls in a partnership that is even more sparkling here. Their scenes together, full of banter, affection and mutual respect, are the film’s heart, and they show Matthau as a romantic leading man in a way his comedies with Jack Lemmon rarely allowed.
Wit as a weapon
Hopscotch works because Matthau’s Kendig does not win by violence. He wins by wit, by charm, and by knowing his enemies better than they know themselves. He books flights under false names, he rents Myerson’s wife’s house in Georgia as a joke, he leaves clues and false trails, and he conducts his entire campaign with the air of a man playing a game he invented. Matthau plays that mischief with infectious joy. He sings Mozart loudly and badly, he enjoys good food and wine, he flirts with Isobel, and he treats the CIA’s pursuit as an inconvenience rather than a threat. It is a performance of great lightness, and it is all the more impressive because Matthau was sixty when he made the film, playing a man who is supposed to be past his prime and who proves, scene after scene, that experience beats youth.
That theme, the experienced professional pushed aside by bureaucrats, connects Hopscotch to Matthau’s other great 1970s roles. Like Charley Varrick, Kendig is an independent who refuses to be managed by a large organisation. Like Charley, he survives by thinking, not by shooting. But where Charley Varrick was a grim crime drama, Hopscotch is a comedy, and Matthau’s lightness here is a deliberate choice. He shows that a spy film does not need cynicism to be intelligent, and that an older hero can be funny, sexy and resourceful without pretending to be young. Neame’s direction supports that lightness, with sunny European locations, a Mozart-dominated score, and a pace that never hurries Kendig’s jokes.
Matthau and Jackson, together again
The reunion of Matthau and Jackson is one of Hopscotch’s greatest strengths. Jackson’s Isobel is Kendig’s equal in every way: intelligent, independent, amused by him and unwilling to be a sidekick. Their relationship is that of two people who have known each other for years, who have a shared history of danger and affection, and who can communicate with a look or a joke. Matthau plays Kendig’s love for Isobel without sentimentality, as a fact of his life, like his love of opera or his distaste for bureaucracy, and Jackson matches him with a dry, warm performance that makes their partnership believable. Together they suggest a model of middle-aged romance that Hollywood rarely showed in 1980: two grown-ups, both experienced, both funny, both free, choosing each other again.
The supporting cast is equally strong, with Ned Beatty as the splendidly odious Myerson, a man whose pettiness makes him a perfect villain precisely because he is not evil, just small-minded, and Sam Waterston as Cutter, the young agent torn between duty and admiration for his mentor. Herbert Lom, as the Soviet agent Yaskov, Kendig’s old friend and rival, brings a similar warmth to the other side of the Cold War, and the film’s suggestion that Kendig and Yaskov respect each other more than they respect their own bosses is both funny and, in its way, profound. Matthau and Lom’s scenes together, two old professionals enjoying a game that their superiors no longer understand, are among the film’s most charming moments.
Why Miles Kendig endures
Miles Kendig endures because he is Matthau’s most joyful creation, the grump transformed into a trickster, the weary professional who decides to enjoy himself. Audiences love Hopscotch because it is a film about a man who refuses to go quietly, who turns retirement into rebellion, and who does so with humour rather than anger. In an era of increasingly violent spy films, Hopscotch was a reminder that espionage could be a battle of wits, and that a hero could win by being cleverer, funnier and more human than his opponents. Matthau, who had spent the 1970s playing men pushed around by institutions, here plays a man who pushes back, and the pleasure of watching him do it is immense.
The film was a critical and commercial success, and it remains a favourite among Matthau admirers, partly because it shows him at his most relaxed and confident. He is not playing a drunk, a schemer or a grump here, although Kendig has elements of all three. He is playing a man who loves life, who loves a good joke, and who loves outwitting pompous authority, and Matthau’s own delight in the role is visible in every scene. It is a fitting capstone to his great 1970s run, a film that takes the intelligence of Charley Varrick, the humour of The Odd Couple and the romance of House Calls, and combines them into a single, sparkling entertainment.
For Past Tunes readers, Hopscotch is the perfect late-career Matthau film, a globe-trotting comedy-thriller that proves a star in his sixties could still carry a film with wit alone. Watch it for the ingenious plot, the European locations and the superb Matthau and Jackson partnership, and stay for Miles Kendig himself, the spy who wrote a book, outwitted the CIA, and reminded audiences that the smartest man in the room is often the one singing opera the loudest.