Beloved Enemy may be the first appearance of Clarke's trademark opening: people walking (marching?) with the camera following them. Here he uses it to suggest the similarity of the main protagonists - even though they represent different interests, and different sides, of the Cold War.
The opening walking shots show the routine of the men. Each suit has his morning commute to a central London office and a diary secretary to greet him. The Russian are marked out by speaking Russian, but otherwise the quick cutting creates confusion. Someone is going to Parliament, the Russians work in a bank, but nothing is precisely established. In the wide shots we lose them among all the other commuters. Graham Crowden's character - who turns out to be a captain of industry, barks to the door man that there's a fire outside that should be dealt with. Is he the politician? Fairly soon after we learn of their real roles, only to end back where we started by the final scenes. "The viewers outside looked from Briton to Russian, and from capitalist to communist; but already it was impossible to say which was
which."
