During a directorial career that spanned five decades, John Huston dabbled in just about every possible type of genre film from overheated melodramas (In This Our Life, Reflections in a Golden Eye) to musicals (Annie), screen biographies (Moulin Rouge, Freud), mysteries (The List of Adrian Messenger), noirs (The Asphalt Jungle), and even produced more than a few classics along the way (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen). He also did a couple of espionage pictures during the latter part of his career, but neither The Mackintosh Man nor The Kremlin Letter gained much popularity. Twilight Time's release of The Kremlin Letter brings this Cold War thriller to DVD for the first time, and while it's not a great success as a movie, it deserves a bit more recognition than it received at the time of its release. It's an occasionally taut, tantalizing thriller that holds one's attention for two hours, its weaknesses tied more to some muddled storytelling and an abruptly shoehorned-in romance than the labyrinthine plot that takes a few viewings to work out all the kinks.
The Kremlin Letter
Directed by John Huston
Studio: Twilight Time
Year: 1969
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 anamorphic
Running Time: 120 minutes
Rating: PG
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 mono English
Subtitles: none
MSRP: $ 19.99
Release Date: available now
Review Date: July 30, 2011
The Film
3/5
With his Navy commission forcibly revoked, Charles Rone (Patrick O'Neal) finds himself on a secret undercover mission with five other operatives without official U.S. sanction attempting to steal back an allegedly incriminating letter between the United States and the Soviet Union stating intentions to band together against China. With the letter’s home now in Moscow, the participants in the mission include mission commander the Highwayman (Dean Jagger), mission coordinator Ward (Richard Boone), master manipulator of females the Whore (Nigel Green), safecracker B.A. (Barbara Parkins) who is a last-minute substitute since her father’s arthritis prevents him from working any longer, and homosexual liaison the Warlock (George Sanders), vital to the mission since one of the key players is gay. Each person has his own specific duties separate and hidden from the others, and since Rone has a photographic memory, he’s chosen to be the anonymous receiver of all gathered information. While the mission hits a snag or two, almost everyone seems to be progressing nicely with their assigned objectives including Rone himself who must pose as a male prostitute to entice information from the wife (Bibi Andersson) of the key Russian spy (Max von Sydow) involved in the initial interception of the letter.
John Huston and Gladys Hill’s screenplay (based on a novel by Noel Behn) is chock-full of incident, but they’ve done a poor job coordinating the information into a meaningful whole for the audience. One is never quite clear how the mission is progressing at any given moment, and when things start to go wrong, one doesn’t know why or how that might impact the members who are still in play. Thus, the tension quotient is drastically reduced without this knowledge, and the film’s impact lessens considerably. To increase the level of provocative sensuality available to filmmakers after the repeal of the Production Code, Huston does his utmost to titillate using a variety of then-unusually frank scenes: scantily-clad girls wrestling, several views of gay bars (where George Sanders gets to don drag) and homosexual gatherings, some quick flashes of lesbian lovemaking, the initial moments of a rape, and a couple of murders (including an especially vicious one in close-up using karate chops). They’re all handled matter-of-factly actually, and Huston doesn’t do any obvious pandering to scandalize potential viewers, but their very existence in the movie sounded yet another death knell to the much more guarded cinema morality of just five years earlier. One motif Huston carries off pretty well is the use of audio subtitles. Instead of printing titles on the film, the actors in voiceover translate what they’re saying on the screen. Oftentimes, in the middle of a scene, they switch from the foreign language to accented English, a nice touch that helps establish mood quite nicely.
Was Patrick O’Neal really the best available choice as the lead for this film? He’s rather robotic and not very appealing (to give him his due, he does seem to be intellectually on point for a man of exceptional mental acuity), but when later in the movie he plays a male whore that the ladies are all supposed to find stunningly desirable, it takes quite a bit of effort to drop one’s disbelief to make him work in this role. Richard Boone pours on the hillbilly shtick a little too thickly as Ward, while Max von Sydow should have upped his menacing quotient fivefold to work effectively as one of the world’s most dangerous assassins (think Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man). Of the rest of the team, George Sanders appears to be having the time of his life as the vixenish Warlock, but Barbara Parkins registers hardly at all as the neophyte agent who gets homesick on the job (her romantic involvement with Patrick O’Neal also generates no sparks at all). In other roles, Bibi Andersson earns points for her acting as if O’Neal were the world’s most sought-after man, and Orson Welles has some key scenes as a Soviet official of some importance to the mission.
Video Quality
4/5
The film’s Panavision aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is accurately presented in this transfer and is anamorphically enhanced for widescreen televisions. Despite a few specks, most of the image is free from age-related artifacts, and sharpness is very good throughout. Color saturation reaches pleasing levels of intensity without ever coming close to oversaturation (though the reds are especially vivid). Flesh tones are nicely rendered, and black levels are fine if not exemplary. The film has been divided into 13 chapters.
Audio Quality
3.5/5
The Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track is decoded by Dolby Prologic into the center channel. It’s very clearly a representation of its era. There is weak low end in the mix and not much resonance present. Dialogue has been well recorded, but ADR dialogue is sometimes quite noticeable from that which was recorded live. Ambient effects and Robert Drasnin’s score occupy the track without ever overwhelming the dialogue.
Special Features
1.5/5
The disc offers an isolated music score track which features Robert Drasnin’s score in an excellent stereo encode which has far more sweep and intensity than it does on the actual film’s mono soundtrack.
Enclosed is a seven page booklet which features some interesting color stills from the film (and behind the scenes shots) plus an essay on the movie by researcher Julie Kirgo, and the film’s poster art on the back cover.
In Conclusion
3/5 (not an average)
As part of Twilight Time’s limited availability program, only 3,000 copies of The Kremlin Letter are available. Those interested in experiencing this little-seen spy thriller should hop to www.screenarchives.com to see if copies are still available. They're also available via Facebook at www.facebook.com/twilighttimemovies .
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
