THE KREMLIN LETTER (1970)

Hard-to-follow globe-trotting Spy vs Spy tale, something to do with the urgent recovery of a letter from some rogue U.S. Naval officer threatening the newly nuclear China.  An unlikely scenario for John Huston's misbegotten shaggy-dog Cold War thriller.  Patrick O’Neal, barely able to keep his eyes open, is the Navy man with a photographic memory recruited by shadowy CIA scenery-chewer Richard Boone to lead a Moscow-based ‘op’ targeting a Russian circle (Max von Sydow, Orson Welles*) also interested in the eponymous letter.  And while the plot and multiple killings come to nothing, perhaps the double-crosses and lack of scruples on both sides of the Iron Curtain caught Huston’s interest.  Or maybe it was the new ‘70s sexual freedom: Lesbian training circles; new girl spy slipping between the sheets to ‘learn the trade’ from O’Neal (a guy who can’t even get his eye lids up); gay spy rings with George Sanders in drag or knitting socks; plus a touch of drugs & S&M .   We’re an onion skin away from parody, a tone that may have pointed the way toward  Huston’s masterly PRIZZI’S HONOR/’85, unimaginable without this misstep.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned, PRIZZI’S HONOR, Huston’s penultimate film.  And one of his best.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Welles looks positively normal-sized (or nearly so) here, and even seems to be playing a role with his own famously undistinguished nose.  Good accent, too.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Not my Screwy Thought, but John Huston’s, trying out a new way to get away with all those Ruskies speaking English for our benefit; a theatrical convention too many people sweat over.  (Sydney Pollack was known to avoid projects that called for it.)  Here, interacting Russian characters start out speaking Russian, but with an English dialogue track quickly covering.  After a line or two of this (literal) double-talk, we switch to English only.  It works, but is it necessary?  Stanley Kramer solved the same issue in JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG/’61 with a speedy 360° panning shot that starts in German and ends in English.  The only thing he did solve.