The complicated plot, in nutshell, revolves around a private team of spies and specialists subcontracted by an unnamed American intelligence outfit to retrieve a diplomatically embarrassing and potentially damaging letter. Patrick O'Neal's Charles Rone, a career Navy officer yanked out of his commission for a special mission by forces beyond his pay grade, is our point-of-view character, the new recruit learning the insidious games played in the name of counter-intelligence. But in the scheme of things he's just another player in a big, messy, tangled ensemble piece with a weird and wonderful cast in a free-for-all chase for the letter, the film's Maguffin in every sense of the term.
Richard Boone (with a bleach job and a ruddy face--the result of skin grafts from a major burn, he explains) takes the point as team leader Ward, a larger than life Texan with a good ol' boy manner and buoyant enthusiasm. He sends Rone to reunite a team of specialists: "The Highwayman" (Dean Jagger, first seen in a country vicar's garb); "Warlock" (George Sanders, found in drag performing in a gay club); "The Whore" (Nigel Green, a pimp in Mexico); and the team's old safecracker and second story man "Erector Set" (Niall MacGinnis), since laid low by arthritis. He's trained his daughter (Barbara Parkins as B.A.--no name, just the initials) to follow in his footsteps and she auditions by cracking a safe with her toes.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain is cold-blooded assassin Max Von Sydow (with suitably subtle menace behind his mask of a determined face), his equally compromised and emotionally tortured wife Bibi Anderson (Sydow's frequent co-star in Ingmar Bergman dramas) and high-ranking Soviet officer Orson Welles, whose own power and position depends on keeping his secret dealings suppressed. As if that isn't enough, dead agents and old intelligence ties become intricately entwined with the motivations and endgames of certain players in this ruthless chess match.
This is hardly the evil authoritarian empire versus the principled honesty of our democratic heroes. The colorful figures and their elaborate schemes (involving extortion, seduction, prostitution and the drug trade) is like James Bond by way of Mission: Impossible in the unforgiving culture of international espionage of John Le Carre's double agents and plots-within-plots. And it's not limited to the enemy. Rone isn't requested for special assignment, he's pressured into service by having his Naval commission revoked. Huston, in a single scene as a Navy Admiral, offers the only judgment on such behavior as he sends Rone to the intelligence wolves with utter disgust. Given that Rone's partners are mercenary operatives driven by money, the outrage isn't misplaced.
The Kremlin Letter crams an exceedingly complicated plot and complex set of relationships into a two-hour film, driving it through the exposition and plot twists with a momentum that suggests these details are secondary to the cold-blooded plotting and cruel shenanigans on display. Not that Huston rushes the scenes. The disgust with which Huston the actor sends O'Neal's Rone off to the intelligence wars pervades Huston's deliberate and clear-eyed direction as he watches the characters debase and humiliate their targets and themselves.
While Boone bounces on the adrenaline of a man who relishes the subterfuge and dirty tricks of this kind of espionage, Sanders is perfectly cool as the wry gay blackmailer insinuating himself into the Russian homosexual underground (he calmly knits as he makes his progress reports) and MacGinnis quite deliberately puts together his network of drugs and whores. These three enjoy their work a little too much, in sharp contrast to the ostensibly principled patriot O'Neal, who plays the part of a male prostitute for his part of plan, and team rookie B.A., going through the motions of seductress out of deference to her father's legacy. Our reluctant agents are also far less interesting or fun than the old pros, in part because Huston never pulls them out of their wooden restraint, especially O'Neal, who is more dour than disillusioned by the whole thing, a grimly serious stiff in a cast of sly scene stealers. It's hard to take your eyes off Boone's hearty presence or his antic performance as the man who has learned all too well that there is no moral imperative in the Cold War spy games. His performance ignites the film whenever he's on screen, giving advice and pep talks or planning the next stage in the operation with a conspiratorial grin, and his energy and commitment makes him the most engaging figure in the film, even when he's doing the most dastardly things.
The cynical power games and hollow values are almost too much for the film to support and they certainly found no favor in the audiences of 1970. The Kremlin Letter was a critical and financial failure for Huston in the midst of the driest period of his career, coming after Sinful Davey and A Walk with Love and Death and before Fat City--now considered one of his best but a box-office flop at the time--and The Mackintosh Man. It hasn't so much been redeemed with time as recognized as quintessential Huston: a motley gang of eccentrics and specialists, a quest in search of a certain grail, a culture of betrayal where human life as a disposable commodity, and a perfectly Hustonian twist that makes all their sacrifices meaningless.
The DVD debut of The Kremlin Letter is also the debut release of the label Twilight Time. The creation of Warner Bros. veteran Brian Jamieson and filmmaker/music restoration specialist Nick Redman, the label is slated to release one disc a month, all from the 20th Century Fox catalogue and using Fox masters, all in limited edition runs of 3,000 units. These are not DVD-R releases but pressed DVDs. The widescreen master for The Kremlin Letter is quite good, clean with strong, not overly-bright color (much of the film takes place in the gloom of a Moscow winter, with Helsinki standing in for Russia). Redman was also instrumental in Twentieth Century Fox's series of limited edition soundtracks and this supplement continues that legacy of honoring film scores by spotlighting Robert Drasnin's score in a music-only audio option, the sole DVD supplement. There is also an illustrated 8-page booklet with a general but well-written essay on the backstory of the film by Julie Kirgo, who previously collaborated with Redman on his documentary Becoming John Ford.
For more information about The Kremlin Letter, visit Twilight Time Video.
by Sean Axmaker
