*. A good movie is often a happy accident of art. You can take all the talent in the world and if it doesn’t come together in the right way then you’ve just got a mess. Why, take a look at Beat the Devil . . .
*. The Kremlin Letter is another John Huston mess. Huston thought it “had all the makings of a success,” and seen from one angle I guess it did. But as Arbogast put it, if it doesn’t jell then it isn’t aspic, and this ain’t jellin’.
*. The obvious place to start is with the script. “In retrospect it was perhaps overcomplicated,” Huston had to admit. No kidding. I honestly had no idea what was going on here, even after reading a detailed plot synopsis I found online. But the basic point is that a team of gentlemen spies (part of an old-school, extra-governmental order of such operatives) is assembled to go to Russia and retrieve a compromising letter.
*. The hero, in this film without many, is Charles Roan (Patrick O’Neal), whose super power is an eidetic memory. Also part of the team are Ward (Richard Boone), an avuncular good ol’ boy, Barbara Perkins as the daughter of a break-and-enter specialist now too arthritic to join the old group (the members of the team are all getting on in years), and a pair of fellows known as the Warlock and the Whore (George Sanders and the ubiquitous Nigel Green, respectively) who are chosen simply because they are such colourful types. Sanders in particular is introduced in drag because he’s gay, don’t you know. And we all know gay spies like to dress in drag.
*. Rounding out the cast we have Max von Sydow as a Russian counterintelligence guy, his wife Bibi Andersson, and Orson Welles as a Communist Party boss. That’s quite a cast, and they’re left totally at sea.
*. In addition to the muddle of the plot there is a huge problem with tone. On the one hand this is definitely a film that, to quote Huston biographer Jeffrey Meyers, “followed the bitter, cynical, and disillusioned tradition of The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and The Ipcress File, but lacked their tight plots and convincing characters.” As Huston himself put it, “I was attracted to the story by its depravity . . . I thought the story shocking, immoral, vicious and cynical.” It is all of this. But this does not make it any more believable or authentic, at least in my book. The team of oddball agents, for example, just strike me as a random gang of eccentrics and I had trouble understanding what function any of them really served.
*. Then there is the treatment of sex. This is even uglier and less credible. As for the ugliness, I’m put in mind of the impression David Thomson had that “Huston never quite trusted women as characters.” I wonder if he even liked them. I mentioned this in my notes on The Maltese Falcon and clearly in the following thirty years Huston hadn’t mellowed in his views.
*. And so there is a gratuitous, leering catfight in the early going that plays nothing like the comparatively innocent gypsy camp scene in From Russia With Love, and a really nasty bit at the end where Andersson is roughed up that I had to wonder at the point of.
*. Aside from this crudity, none of the female characters comes across as believable. We go from the bizarre and embarrassing innocence of Barbara Perkins (“My father says that going to bed is an integral part of the job and one must be good at it. So I thought that, uh, I mean I . . .”) to the masochistic lust of Andersson (“Hit me again! kick me! kick me!”), in both cases falling for the distinctly unimpressive O’Neal, who is impersonating, quite improbably, a Russian gigolo part of the time. If you find any of this grittily realistic I’m not sure where your canons of realism were formed.
*. The weird (to give it a neutral adjective) attitude toward sex is also present in the scene where the captured Russian cracks not at the threat of his wife and youngest daughter being tortured, but at video of his older daughter being seduced by another woman. Now that’s going too far!
*. Maybe one of the stars Huston had wanted to play Roan might have saved some of this. Steve McQueen, Warren Beatty, and Robert Redford were all considered for the role. They might at least have projected some sexual heat. But perhaps they read the script and thought better.
*. It’s hard to think of any highlights. Some praise is usually given over to the photography, but I don’t think Finland standing in for Russia looks any different here than it did in Billion Dollar Brain. There’s little action, and that little is not well done. Flourishes like the rolling, unwinding ball of red yarn seem more laboured than stylish. The idea of having scenes begin being spoken in Russian and then switching into English was, at least, a curious innovation. But I can’t say it helps much. The only part of it I found myself enjoying was the confrontation between Von Sydow and Welles, which wraps up by being held by Huston for a long, silent shot that’s quite effective.
*. The film’s end is dark and despairing indeed. Despairing because even if Roan accepts his new mission it doesn’t seem likely that this will be the end of it. But at the same time it’s a punch that fails to fully land, in part because the intercut images are necessary to remind us of who the note is even talking about, and it’s unclear what Ward’s motives are. Perhaps, if I had been paying more attention, all of this would have been clearer, but as I’ve said before the biggest problem with confusing movies is that after a certain point you simply stop caring. So, instead of feeling the horror intended I only registered relief that it was over.
Alex on Film 
So where was this critical scalpel when you were dealing with the Lep? I guess that’s why the Lep is regarded as a seminal force in film and Huston an also ran….sarcasm aside, you’re only digging a deeper and deeper hole for yourself.
I can honestly say I’d rather watch Leprechaun again than this. I had a struggle just to finish it.
No good kills? Seriously, you’ve got your map the wrong way up. George Sanders knitting= good. Leps on pogo sticks= bad. Day one in film school….
Did Sanders do anything with those needles except knit? I kept wondering what that particular team had been assembled for, since none of them seem to do anything.
Sigh. Did the Lep make off with your imagination too? Plot and character are the cornerstone of film….can’t all be tongues pointing out of telephones. Your dalliance with the Lep has left your critical faculties in tatters, mate.
This is Leprechaun Derangement Syndrome! The plot here is lost, and the characters are unbelievable and have no function!
In the Lep films, yes, but not in the hands of a master like Huston! Did it bother you that the characters did not use pogo sticks and go-karts?
Only to the extent that I thought it would have been a better movie if they had. Sanders on a pogo stick might have turned things around.
All I’m saying is that I gave the Lep a generous review in the circumstances. Costs nothing to be nice…
You failed to give Leprechaun a single star. Not. One. Single. Star. And it spawned an entire franchise. That is not generous.
That was generous. If I had been critically minded, I would have locked the Lep in a box and burned it. That’s what the little twerp deserves. he’s a half-baked Freddy Kruger and I’d be happy to boot his stipey stockinged-ass out of the world of cinema.
This betrays a real anti-Leprechaun bias, bordering on Leprephobia. Alas, I can only open doors.
*sigh*
No, he’s an evil little critter and it’s OK to hate him. You won’t be laughing when he turns up at YOUR front door. he is rubbish and so are his movies. Thank u, next!
You knew that by giving him a bad review he was going to get his revenge and trash your place. Those are the rules.
He’s fictional. I’m not afraid of the lep. What nonsense. I’m not giving the Lep a good review, I take it your generosity is because you’re afraid of him?
No fear. Though he did flip me one of his gold coins.
A bribe? Obviously Huston didn’t pony up?
Payola. This blog has to generate some income.
So…you got a coin from a lep? That’s you monitising your blog?
Those are gold coins! And according to Leprechaun 3 (which you didn’t, ahem, get to) they’re magic and grant wishes.
You are living in a fantasy world.
Would have if he’d have fallen on it. Do not like him one bit, in anything.
This is Sanders falling on his knitting needles?
Was thinking if he’d fallen on the pogo stick, that would do the best damage I think, though knotting needles are good too.
I believe in the movie he falls out of a window. If he’d had a pogo stick he might have bounced.
Oh I’m glad he did, hope that was the end of him!
Nope will suffice for this.
It certainly will! It’s a real slog to sit through. Seems to have a following among some Scottish cineastes, but that’s it.
It’s the thing they have to do with Houston/Welles/Hitchcock movies. Doesn’t matter if the story is any good so long as those names are attached and it’s shot in moody black and white.
Something I wrote on my site 4 years ago: “Alex on Film addicts the casual websurfer film fan with incisive analysis of plot holes, behind-the-scenes connections, and other lesser-considered aspects of movies. His beat encompasses classics as well as genre trash you’d never watch (e.g., the Predator series).”
Or the Leprechaun series. A review isn’t automatically an endorsement. Keep up the good work.
I think Eddie just likes to tease me about the Leprechaun.
Leprechaun was trash. But I was being honest when I said it was easier to watch than this thing. Kremlin Letter is a real dud. Which is amazing given some of the talent involved. I think Huston might have just been late to the party when it came to spy movies. Plus the incredible bleakness of the story here seems an odd fit with the silliness.