The movies' fascination with espionage can be traced back to the onset of World War One, when spying was popularized in serials such as Lucille Love, Girl Of Mystery (1914), Pearl Of The Army (1916) starring Pearl White, Liberty, A Daughter Of The U.S.A. (1916), and Patria (1917). Melodramas of Americans fighting German spies also began appearing, with Our Secret Wives (1915), The Hero Of The Submarine (1916), and As In A Looking Glass (1916). After the country's entry into the war, a plethora of similar espionage tales were made, including The Greatest Power (1917), starring Ethel Barrymore, and The Marriage Ring (1918), directed by Fred Niblo. Landmark filmmaker D.W. Griffith made his only foray into the genre with The Great Love (1918), about a Canadian soldier whose girlfriend unwittingly marries a German spy. As the title of Raoul Walsh's The Prussian Cur (1918) suggests, most spy movies of the time were fairly lurid propaganda films; other examples include The Hun Within (1918), The Claws Of The Hun (1918), and The Kasier's Shadow (1918).

World War One espionage tales appeared even after the war, with such late releases as The Dark Star (1919), directed by Alan Dwan, and 23-1/2 Hours' Leave (1919), directed by Henry King; they continued into the 1920s with New Lives For Old (1925), Secret Orders (1926), and producer/director Rex Ingram's drama of a female German spy, Mare Nostrum (1926). Greta Garbo portrayed a Russian agent who falls in love with an Austrian captain in The Mysterious Lady (1928). Comedies that poked fun at World War One intrigue included Yankee Doodle In Berlin (1919), with female impersonator Bothwell Browne wooing information out of the Kaiser; The Better 'Ole (1926) with Sydney Chaplin; Friendly Enemies (1925) with Weber and Fields; and Heart Trouble (1928) with Harry Langdon. The first classic of espionage, however, was set in the present. Spies (1928), directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea Von Harbou, starred Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the master criminal Haghi, who uses a vast network of agents to destabilize economies and assassinate diplomats. This lively and imaginative thriller, with its fiendish super villain and its colorful look at the tricks of the spying trade, anticipated the more fantastic spy adventures of the 1960s.

The 1930s saw such dramas of World War One intrigue as Young Eagles (1930), directed by William A. Wellman; Stamboul Quest (1934), directed by Sam Wood; and Lancer Spy (1937), directed by Gregory Ratoff. Marlene Dietrich, in director Josef von Sternberg's Dishonored (1931), and Greta Garbo in the title role of Mata Hari (1932), portrayed glamorous German spies who ultimately sacrifice their lives for their love of men who are on the side of the enemy. Michael Powell's The Spy In Black (1939, aka U-Boat 29), starred Conrad Veidt as a German spy in Scotland, whose contact is actually a double agent. Once again, however, the classics were present-day thrillers. Deftly blending humor, suspense, and action, director Alfred Hitchcock made a brilliant group of films in which ordinary people run afoul of the chaotic world of espionage: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Secret Agent (1936), Sabotage (1936), and The Lady Vanishes (1938).

Spy thrillers proliferated as the menace of Nazi Germany became more immediate in the late '30s: Cipher Bureau (1938), Espionage Agent (1939), Spy For A Day (1939), and director Anatole Litvak's Confessions Of A Nazi Spy (1939). With the start of World War Two, the genre was revived in full force. Night Train To Munich (1940), directed by Carol Reed and written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (the writers of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes), was a witty and exciting tale of British agents undercover in Nazi Germany. Hitchcock directed two bravura espionage films, Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942), in which Americans battled Nazi agents in Europe and the States, respectively. Michael Powell's The 49th Parallel (1942, aka The Invaders) depicted the survivors of a sunken Nazi U-boat traveling through Canada to the border of the then-neutral United States. Across The Pacific (1942), directed by John Huston, starred Humphrey Bogart as a naval officer who infiltrates a Japanese spy ring. Director Raoul Walsh had Nazi agents being bested by George Raft in Turkey (Background To Danger, 1943) and Errol Flynn in Canada (Northern Pursuit, 1943). Watch On The Rhine (1943) adapted Lillian Hellman's play about the heroic struggle of an anti-Nazi German. Billy Wilder's Five Graves To Cairo (1943) starred Franchot Tone as a British soldier who infiltrates the command of the Nazi Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Casablanca (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz, had plenty of intrigue in its tale of Resistance leader Paul Henreid eluding the Nazis, but the film remains beloved by audiences for its romantic drama between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Director Fritz Lang made several memorable wartime espionage thrillers: Man Hunt (1941), written by Dudley Nichols, detailed a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler; Hangmen Also Die (1943), co-scripted by Bertolt Brecht, dramatized the successful assassination of the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich; Ministy Of Fear (1944), adapted from Graham Greene's novel, starred Ray Milland as an innocent civilian who stumbles onto a ring of German spies.

Axis agents got their lumps in a legion of serials, including

Captain Midnight (1942), Don Winslow Of The Navy (1942), The Masked Marvel (1943), and Secret Agent X-9 (1945). Gangsters went straight to fight German spies in All Through The Night (1942) and Lucky Jordan (1942). Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson were updated to tackle Nazi operatives in Sherlock Holmes And The Voice Of Terror (1942), Sherlock Holmes And The Secret Weapon (1942), and Sherlock Holmes In Washington (1942). Wartime comedies in which fascist spies are clobbered include Dutiful But Dumb (1941) with the Three Stooges, My Favorite Blonde (1942) and They Got Me Covered (1943) with Bob Hope, and Air Raid Wardens (1943) with Laurel and Hardy. To Be Or Not To Be (1942), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and written by Edwin Mayer, was a memorable comedy about a troupe of Polish actors working against the Nazi invaders.

Movies continued dramatizing wartime espionage even after World War Two. Cloak And Dagger (1946), directed by Fritz Lang, starred Gary Cooper as an American scientist gathering information about the Nazi atomic-bomb program. Producer Louis de Rochemont and director Henry Hathaway made a pair of memorable, fact-based, documentary-style dramas: The House On 92nd Street (1945), in which the FBI battles Nazi agents in New York City, and 13 Rue Madeleine (1947), about American agents searching for a German missile site in France. O.S.S. (1946) dramatized the intelligence work of the Office of Strategic Services. Frank Launder's The Adventuress (1947) starred Deborah Kerr as a young Irish woman whose hatred for England prompts her to help Nazi spies. Director Alfred Hitchcock again turned to the present for his classic Notorious (1946), written by Ben Hecht. One of the first "dirty game" looks at spying, this character-driven film starred Cary Grant as an agent who must watch the woman he loves (Ingrid Bergman) take the assignment of marrying an escaped Nazi who is dealing in atomic-weaponry secrets.

As the Cold War began to heat up, spy films turned their attention to Communism. The Iron Curtain (1948), directed by William A. Wellman, was a fact-based tale of the ordeal of a Soviet defector. Walk East On Beacon (1952), produced by Louis de Rochemont, took a documentary approach to its account of the FBI breaking up a Soviet spy ring. Russell Rouse's dialogue-less The Thief (1952) starred Ray Milland as an atomic scientist who sells secrets to the enemy. Samuel Fuller's Pickup On South Street (1953) starred Richard Widmark as a pickpocket who stumbles onto a ring of Communist agents. More risible indictments of Soviet infiltration of the American way of life include The Red Menace (1949); I Married A Communist (1950); My Son John (1952), directed by Leo McCarey; Big Jim McLain (1952), with John Wayne battling Commies in Hawaii; and Shack Out On 101 (1955), with Lee Marvin as a Red spy who poses as a short-order cook named Slob! Anti-Communist espionage was also depicted beyond America's shores. State Secret (1950, aka The Great Manhunt), written and directed by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, starred Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as an American escaping from an unnamed Eastern European dictatorship. Producer/director Carol Reed's The Man Between (1953) dramatized tensions between East and West Berlin. Man On A Tightrope (1953), directed by Elia Kazan, depicted a circus troupe fleeing Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia. The Quiet American (1958), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, starred Audie Murphy as an idealistic American dismayed by both the Communists and the colonialists of Saigon. Alfred Hitchcock eschewed Red-baiting rhetoric for two outstanding thrillers of innocent citizens entangled with spies: his remake The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and North By Northwest (1959). By the end of the '60s, however, he'd make the more explicitly anti-Communist (and less successful) Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969).

A few 1950s films looked back to when the Nazis were the bad guys. Decision Before Dawn (1952), directed by Anatole Litvak and written by Peter Viertel, was a realistic tale of an anti-Nazi German working undercover in his homeland. Five Fingers (1952), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starred James Mason as an Albanian valet passing British secrets to the Nazis. The Man Who Never Was (1956) was based on a real-life incident of Allied disinformation planted among the Nazis. George Seaton's The Counterfeit Traitor (1961) also returned to World War Two for its fact-based tale of a Swedish businessman blackmailed by the British into gathering intelligence for the Allies. Otherwise, spy films of the early 1960s were obsessively anti-Communist. Man On A String (1960), directed by Andre De Toth and produced by Louis de Rochemont, dramatized the activities of real-life counterspy (and Hollywood film producer) Boris Morros. Graham Greene adapted his novel for producer/director Carol Reed's Our Man In Havana (1960), a satiric look at British agents in pre-Castro Cuba. But the landmark spy film of the era was director John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962), adapted by George Axelrod from Richard Condon's novel: Satire, thrills, and paranoia were combined for this memorable tale of a Korean War hero brainwashed by the Communists to function as an assassin.

The explosion of spy films in the 1960s and '70s can be traced to the success of one secret agent: "Bond. James Bond." Ian Fleming's James Bond novels were adapted in a series of increasingly lucrative box-office hits, starting with Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963), both directed by Terence Young, and Goldfinger (1964), directed by Guy Hamilton. Sean Connery became a star playing Bond, agent 007 (the "00" designating his official license to kill), and the films established a pattern that was imitated countless times: The spy was magnetic to women, self-confident, expertly skilled in virtually every discipline of mind and body, and armed with high-tech weaponry with which he could battle any criminal genius bent on world domination.

As the Bond films became increasingly self-parodic and formularized, a slew of spy spoofs appeared. James Coburn starred as super agent Derek Flint in Our Man Flint (1966) and In Like Fint (1967). Other parodies included The Reluctant Spy (1963), starring Jean Marais; Agent 8-3/4 (1965); Lindsay Shonteff's The Second Best Secret Agent In The Whole Wide World (1965); Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine (1965), directed by Norman Taurog, and its sequel, Dr. Goldfoot And The Girl Bombs (1966), directed by Mario Bava; The Spy With A Cold Nose (1966); Dick Clement's Otley (1968); and Operation Kid Brother (1967, aka O.K. Connery; Secret Agent 00), which attempted unsuccessfully to make a genre star of Sean Connery's brother Neil. Woody Allen redubbed a low-budget Japanese spy film into the hilarious send-up What's Up Tiger Lily? (1967). The apotheosis of the spy spoof was the star-studded, extravagant, rambling, and totally un-Fleming-like 007 film Casino Royale (1967), which featured the work of five directors, including John Huston.

Other spy-fiction heroes who reached the screen included Len Deighton's Harry Palmer, a realistic, non-heroic character played by Michael Caine in The Ipcress File (1965), directed by Sidney J. Furie; Funeral In Berlin (1966), directed by Guy Hamilton; and Billion Dollar Brain (1967), directed by Ken Russell. Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm, played by Dean Martin, stuck to the Bond formula of beautiful women and vile arch-criminals in The Silencers (1966), Murderers' Row (1966), The Ambushers (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1968). Modesty Blaise (1966), directed by Joseph Losey, brought to life the female secret agent of comic-strip fame; John Phillip Law was comic-book super-villain Diabolik in director Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik! (1968). American actor Kerwin Matthews played the title role in O.S.S. 117 (1963), launching a series in which the Bond-like agent was also played by Frederic Stafford (Furia A Bahia Pour O.S.S. 117, 1965, aka O.S.S. 117 -- Mission For A Killer) and John Gavin (Pas Des Roses Pour O.S.S. 117, 1968, aka O.S.S. 117 -- Double Agent). Roger Hanin was secret agent Tiger in director Claude Chabrol's Le Tigre Aime La Chair Fraîche (1964, aka Code Name: Tiger) and Le Tigre Se Parfume A La Dynamite (1965).

In reaction to the unreal Bond films and their imitators, several harsh and downbeat espionage tales were made in the 1960s. Paul Dehn adapted two John Le Carré novels -- The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1965), directed by Martin Ritt, and The Deadly Affair (1967), directed by Sidney Lumet -- for memorable accounts of the disillusionments and betrayals facing veteran British spies. La Guerre Est Finie (1967), directed by Alain Renais and written by Jorge Semprun, was a stylized look at the uncertain life of an agent working against Franco's Spain. Other examples include the multi-episode Guerre Sécrete (1965, aka The Dirty Game), Raoul Lévy's The Defector (1966), The Quiller Memorandum (1966), The Liquidator (1966), The Naked Runner (1967), and producer/director Anthony Mann's A Dandy In Aspic (1968).

After Thunderball (1965), directed by Terence Young, and You Only Live Twice (1967), directed by Lewis Gilbert, Sean Connery insisted he'd had his full playing Bond. The next 007 film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), directed by Peter Hunt, starred the unknown George Lazenby as Bond. He was rejected by the public and Connery returned to the role for Diamonds Are Forever (1971), directed by Guy Hamilton. He'd play Bond only once more (to date), in Never Say Never Again (1983), directed by Irvin Kershner. Connery's heir was Roger Moore, a less charismatic actor who nevertheless had the requisite wit and style to win the audience acceptance denied Lazenby. Moore played 007 in elaborate, stunt- and machine-laden actioners from directors Guy Hamilton (Live And Let Die, 1973; The Man With The Golden Gun, 1974), Lewis Gilbert (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977; Moonraker, 1979), and John Glen (For Your Eyes Only, 1981; Octopussy, 1983; A View To A Kill, 1985). After Moore called it quits, Timothy Dalton played a harder, more realistic James Bond in License To Kill (1989), directed by John Glen. The series then took a brief hiatus until GoldenEye (1995), with Pierce Brosnan as 007. Brosnan went on to maintain the franchise with Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and The World Is Not Enough (1999).

World War Two could still inspire the occasional espionage thriller, such as The Day Of The Jackal (1973), directed by Fred Zinnemann, and The Eagle Has Landed (1975), directed by John Sturges; Eye Of The Needle (1981) starred Donald Sutherland as a Nazi undercover agent stranded off the coast of England. Otherwise, a severe revisionist phase began for espionage films in the '70s. Romantic dramas such as Blake Edwards' The Tamarind Seed (1974) or spoofs such as S*P*Y*S (1974), directed by Irvin Kershner, became rarities. Spying was no longer seen as good guys against bad guys, but rather as an alternate reality in which no one can tell allies from adversaries, or if a mission was actually a trap. John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1970), adapted from Noel Behn's novel, featured an unsavory team of veteran American agents undercover in Russia; almost all of them are killed in what turns out to be a ruse instigated by their leader so he can take his own revenge against a KGB official -- and then take over his job! The Looking Glass War (1970), Frank Pierson's adaptation of John Le Carré's novel, was a similarly grim study in failure. Scorpio (1972) starred Burt Lancaster as a CIA operative marked for death by his former employers; Three Days Of The Condor (1975) had the CIA trying to kill one of its researchers. British Intelligence kidnaps the son of one of their own operatives to extort his cooperation in The Black Windmill (1974), directed by Don Siegel. In director John Huston's The Mackintosh Man (1974), a stalemated British agent agrees to let two defectors flee to the Soviet Union, only to see his partner kill them both in cold blood.

The paranoia of the more serious '60s spy films was also magnified in the 1970s. Telefon (1977), directed by Don Siegel, has the KGB planting brainwashed agents in the U.S., who can be triggered to commit sabotage. The corrosive effect of a life of espionage, where conflicting loyalties can leave one with no country at all, is seen in Les Silencieux (1973, aka Escape To Nowhere) and producer/director Otto Preminger's The Human Factor (1979), adapted by Tom Stoppard from Graham Greene's novel. Other films depicted invincible cabals of assassination and control, against which all struggle is futile: The Parallax View (1974), directed by Alan J. Pakula, and producer/director Stanley Kramer's The Domino Principle (1977) both end with their heroes being gunned down.

The tide of espionage films began to wane in the '80s, a victim of the genre's own cynicism and disenchantment. Director Sam Peckinpah's The Osterman Weekend (1983), adapted from Robert Ludlum's novel, has the CIA duping an agent into betraying his friends. The Jigsaw Man (1984) starred Michael Caine as a defector to Russia, who returns to England on a mission. Another Country (1984) and The Falcon And The Snowman (1985) looked at the psychology of treason for their fact-based accounts of young men who turned to the Soviets. The spoof also trickled away in the '80s: The Nude Bomb (1980), directed by Clive Donner, brought to the big screen Maxwell Smart (Don Adams), Agent 86 of the 1960s television series "Get Smart"; Top Secret! (1984) was a gag-laden send-up of every wartime-spy cliche imaginable; Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986), directed by Penny Marshall, starred Whoopi Goldberg as yet-another average person sucked into the world of spying; and Spies Like Us (1985), directed by John Landis, had Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase as bumbling secret agents.

The late 1980s and early '90s were lean years for espionage films. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the sense of urgency seemed absent: Audiences stayed away from director Fred Schepisi's The Russia House (1991), adapted by Tom Stoppard from John Le Carré's novel. Spying also seemed no more attractive as a period activity, with the failure of the World War Two-era Shinging Through (1992), starring Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith. The 30th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination prompted interest in such conspiracy films as Ruby (1993) and Oliver Stone's JFK (1992). Fascination with espionage, however, continued to smolder, with Luc Besson's La Femme Nikita (1990) and its American remake Point Of No Return (1993), and director John McTiernan's The Hunt For Red October (1990), which brought to the screen novelist Tom Clancy's CIA agent Jack Ryan, played by Alec Baldwin. Two more Jack Ryan films followed, both starring Harrison Ford and directed by Phillip Noyce: Patriot Games (1992) and Clear And Present Danger (1994). Both films were also largely actioners, a sub-genre that has come to dominate the spy film, with hits such as James Cameron's True Lies (1994), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and director Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible (1996), from the 1960s television series, starring Tom Cruise. The spy spoof also became hot box-office again with Mike Myers' 1960s send-up Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery (1997), and its sequels Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) and Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002).

With the success of the Austin Powers films, comic spying has become ubiquitous, with such 21st-century efforts as Ben Stiller's Zoolander (2001); the World War Two-era drag comedy All The Queen's Men (2002); the unlikely-buddy spy films Bad Company (2002), with Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock, and I Spy (2002), from the 1960s television series, with Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson; and comedy actioners such as The Tuxedo (2002), with Jackie Chan, and Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids (2001) and Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002). The genre also continues to produce slightly more serious actioners, such as Mission: Impossible II (2000), directed by John Woo; the 007 film Die Another Day (2002), with Pierce Brosnan; the Jack Ryan film The Sum Of All Fears (2002), with Ben Affleck replacing Harrison Ford; and XXX (2002) with Vin Deiesel and Asia Argento. As for true dramatic espionage films, notable recent examples include John Boorman's John Le Carré adapatation The Tailor Of Panama (2001) and the remake The Quiet American (2002), directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Michael Caine. Whether audiences are in the mood for laughter, high-tech action, or moody drama, the spy film is likely to remain one of the first genres to which they will turn.