The Kremlin Letter is a 1970 American spy thriller film directed by John Huston, adapted by Huston and Gladys Hill from the 1966 novel by Noel Behn.
The film was planned to be shot over 17 weeks, with 13 weeks at Dino De Laurentiis' studio in Rome, Italy; 2 weeks in Helsinki and one week in both Mexico and New York City. Though Huston had wanted to film on-location in Moscow, Cold War politics discouraged him from seeking filming permits, which also scuttled plans to film in communist Romania. Instead, many of the scenes set in Moscow were filmed in the Finnish capital city of Helsinki which featured similar neoclassical architecture. Filming locations in New York included the Hispanic Society of America, Central Park Zoo and Greenwich Village. By September 1970, the studio recorded a loss of $3,939,000 on the film to the studio.
Critical response
The film was subject to criticism upon its release. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the movie "depressing." Variety had already noted in a pre-release review that The Kremlin Letter "...makes for valuable viewing, but with the piecing together [it is] another thing. Thus is this nastiness of the spy business graphically described. It is an engagingly photographed piece of business." A much later TV Guide review said the film was "Beautifully photographed... [but] a hopelessly convoluted spy drama with so many intricate interweavings that you truly need a scorecard to keep track of the plotters."
Much later, fan-author Jerry Kutner wrote "Among the films of 1970, John Huston's The Kremlin Letter was as unself-consciously noir as his '40s and '50s work." Craig Butler of AllMovie wrote, "Although it has its partisans, most consider The Kremlin Letter to be a big disappointment... the plot of the novel upon which it is based is simply too dense to be translated to the screen in a film of normal length." Butler went on to note that "Richard Boone really shines, turning in a very fine performance that leaves the rest of the actors in the dust... there are those who will greatly enjoy Kremlin for its twisted plotting and cynicism..."
In 2005, UCLA scholar Bob Hudson noted in the journal Lingua Romana that French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville "...used the term magisterial in praise of John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1970), which he had just viewed the night before the interview. Despite the commercial failure of the film, Melville saw it as establishing the standard for cinema, and explained his quest as an attempt to achieve such grandeur." The Time Out Film Guide calls The Kremlin Letter "powerful... possibly the clearest statement of Huston's vision of a cruel and senseless world in operation."
In 2009, the film was listed in 100 Greatest Spy Movies: A Special Collector's Edition from the Editors of American History.
See also
- List of American films of 1970