Night Flight From Moscow (aka The Serpent)

 

Picture: C-     Sound: C     Extras: C-     Film: B-

 

 

Many Cold War spy tales were made about defectors, not even including all the great TV shows that covered it, but Henri Verneuil’s Night Flight From Moscow (1973, also issued as The Serpent) went all out to take a new approach in delving into the process.  Based on Pierre Nord’s book Le 13e Suicide, Yul Brynner (who had Westworld going for him the same year) is the Soviet defector who claims to have vital information he is willing to give to U.S. intelligence if he is allowed to defect.  The question is: is he telling the truth or up to something else.

 

Major CIA operative Davies (Henry Fonda) intends to find out, bringing this new “guest” to Langley, which seems to have been partly recreated by a large model that holds up rather well for its age and time.  This tightly knit, claustrophobic work takes the long way in showing all the tests Vlassov (Brynner) is put through, all the others who are contacted, and the research applied to authenticate what really is going on.

 

The film also uses matter-of-fact voice-over that is entertaining in its extraordinary detail of all the operations it can divulge.  Dirk Bogarde is Boyle, another investigator most interested in the situation, and the rest of the cast is rounded out by no les than Philippe Noiret, Michel Bouquet, Farley Granger, and “sex symbol of the moment” Virna Lisi.  This is a really good cast, and odd energy is generated between Brynner and Fonda.  Director Verneuli had an international success with The Sicilian Clan back in 1969 and was chasing another such commercial/critical success.  He may not have succeeded, but it was not for lack of ambition by a longshot.

 

The film gets muddled-down by its approach, but it is especially fascinating to watch today as a time capsule of its era and how seriously the East/West conflict was being taken.  This is an authentic, serious Spy film, but the trouble is also reminiscent of similar problems Alfred Hitchcock himself ran into with Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969) in believing that a no-nonsense approach to counter the type of Spy films the James Bond films made possible is not sufficient enough to make a great film.

 

The result instead is like the police procedural docudramas that tried to negate the Film Noir era as soon as TV arrived.  The twist is these films are not that stiff or corny, and also would suddenly feature some interesting action that broke through the monotony.  Hitchcock offered a Nazi being gassed and police possibly raiding a tour bus in Communist territory, while this film offers an odd car stunt among other things.  Its fascination and focus on technology and multiple TV screens was ahead of its time, but it never offers the ironic distance that the likes of Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976, reviewed in its great DVD set elsewhere on this site) offers.

 

Another way of explaining the big limits that this film and the Hitchcock films in the same boat try to deny the Science Fiction aspects of the Spy genre, while the Bonds went overboard with them.  By 1973, Bond was down to earth with Roger Moore and the Voodoo/Horror/Blaxploitation happenings of Live And Let Die, so this film was a bit late in a way Hitchcock’s films were not.

 

Despite these limits, anyone who likes these stars or Spy films really needs to see this film at least once.  Brynner had already done the Bondian Double Man (1967) and proved he could still be a major lead.  Westworld was the surprise hit it deserved to be.

 

Though the image is anamorphically enhanced and the film was shot in 2.35 X 1 Panavision, in color by the great Claude Renoir, the DVD cuts it to 1.78 X 1 and the image is problematic.  A very harsh, digital appearance sadly runs throughout the viewing, and though color looks like it was up to Renoir’s capacities, this is ruined by a transfer that is at once marred and inaccurate.  Originally issued by the now-defunct, and always great Avco Embassy, M-G-M (for a change) did not have the DVD rights, which are now with Pathfinder DVD and Cinema Arts.  Renoir would shoot his last film a few years later as his eyesight started to sadly fade: the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977.

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is offered in three interesting language options: English, Spanish, and French.  The actual actors participated in more than one each, and sometimes all three.  Four extras clips include three that demonstrate the differences, while the remaining clip is the English opening credits.  The music was written by no less than Ennio Morricone, which makes one wonder if he recorded the actual film tracks in stereo.  If so, Pathfinder and Cinema Arts ought to upgrade this film to stereo when a high-definition version is called for.  A trailer and a few filmographies are the remaining extras, all also interesting, if short.

 

So here we have a Spy film that is dated, but better than just about all such films we have seen in the last few years.  That is a sad statement about the status of the genre, which means anyone thinking of making such a film should make Night Flight From Moscow a required viewing.  Everyone else should just try it out for kicks.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo