Le serpent

Finally I was able to see the thriller The Serpent on DVD under a new but poor title NIGHT TRAIN FROM MOSCOW (why this has been changed I don't know).

Any film that has Yul Brynner, Henry Fonda & Dirk Bogarde has to be worth watching but this is rarely shown on TV so I was pleased to find the recent Pathfinder DVD release. The film is very much in the trend of your typical spy drama from the sixties (see The Spy who came in from the Cold and The Quiller Memorandum) despite being made in 1973.

Brynner is Vlassov a valuable KGB agent who defects on the condition he supplies the CIA with information regarding Double Agents operating in the West. Question: Is he telling the truth or is he himself another carefully placed spy? It's up to CIA head Henry Fonda with the help of British Intelligence Representative Dirk Bogarde to determine this.

Phillipe Noiret, Farley Granger, Robert Alda (father of Alan) and Virna Lisi provide the support in an intriguing thriller. Although some of the plot twists are predictable and there's a lengthy absence of the 3 main protagonists in the second act, the pace is just right as opposed to other Bond alternative spy dramas where slow pacing and no action result in boredom.

Surprising therefore that The Serpent isn't more widely known as it's a gem of a thriller with a good ending.

Prototypical Cold War thriller deals with an aging soviet spy named Vlassov (here Yul Brynner plays Russian Colonel Alexei Vlassov , that's why Brynner plays a character of his own nationality ; as Brynner's full birth name was Yuli Borisovich Bryner) who attempts to defect the East world . The CIA chief named Allan Davies (Henry Fonda) interrogates him, using polygrapher (interrogator played by Robert Alda), computer programming , and other means . Then Davies must decide if he's telling the truth . One of these men is working for the C. I. A. If One of This Group is The Serpent - 13 People Are Going to Die!... The Master Spy

This complex espionage picture is packed with thrills , suspense , tension and extraordinary performances . This movie was made and released about three years after its source French novel titled "The Thirteenth Who Committed Suicide" by Pierre Nord that was first published in 1971 . Good spy movie , in fact the there are various Spy agencies featured in this flick , including the American CIA, Soviet KGB , Russian Mi6 and the West German intelligence service . It's a slow moving spy-movie with emphasis on de-glamorizing espionage . Sensational acting by two big star names , Yul Brynner as a spy who defects with a fistful of important documents and Henry Fonda as a chief who must discover the hard truth . Strong secondary cast with all-star-cast , such as : Dirk Bogarde , Farley Granger , Philippe Noiret , gorgeous Virna Lisi and several others .

Displaying an interesting and thrilling screenplay by producer and director Henry Verneuil himself , along with writers Perrault and Tom Rowe. As well as atmospheric musical composed by Ennio Morricone and well conducted by Bruno Nicolai . Superbly realistic and adequate cinematography by cameraman Claude Renoir . The picture was splendidly directed by Henry Verneuil, a Turkish filmmaker working in France from the 40s . Although not a director of great reputation among the critics , his movies have almost all been aimed squarely at the commercial market . Verneuil is an expert on heist-genre such as he proved in ¨The Sicilians clan (68)¨ with Jean Gabin and Alain Delon, ¨The burglars(1971)¨ with Omar Shariff and Jean Paul Belmondo ; furthermore , specialist on Warlike genre : ¨Weekend at Dunkirk¨ and ¨The 25th hour¨, espionage as ¨ Night flight from Moscow¨ and even directed one Western : ¨Guns of San Sebastian¨ (68) . He seemed to have dropped out of the film-making after 1976, but in 1981 unexpectedly reappeared with yet another of his caper films : ¨Thousand millions of dollars¨. Rating : Acceptable and notable flick , a decent yarn that must be seen for French cinema lovers and Henry Fonda and Yul Brynner fans.

The convoluted spy movie "Le serpent" ("Night Flight to Moscow" in English) features Yul Brynner as a Soviet colonel who defects to the United States, claiming that he has info about an assassination network. Much of the movie focuses on the intelligence communities in different countries investigating what he said. This probably would have been easier to watch in the cinema, since you need to know when to have subtitles turned on: they suddenly start speaking different languages at random times.

It's not a great movie, but worth seeing. Just understand that this is a complicated one; no James Bond stuff here. Also starring Henry Fonda, Dirk Bogarde, Farley Granger, Philippe Noiret and Virna Lisi.

For those of you expecting an edge-of-your-seat nail-biter with great vehicles for two big Hollywood stars -- I'm sorry, you won't find it in this movie.

This has to be one of the oddest films I've ever seen. The biggest reason is because of the language(s) of the film. I spent quite some time trying to figure out if this film was supposed to be an English, French or even German speaking film. I finally turned on the English subtitles about 20 minutes through after it became clear that I needed to understand what the frenchies were saying to follow the film at all.

Activities take place in France, Germany, Britan and the U.S., and wherever we go pretty much everyone just speaks their native language. I'd say about half the film is French, half English, with a few misc. languages probably thrown in there somewhere. Understanding that the film itself has no subtitles (just included on DVD) makes this rather weird, unless of course, you're fluent in both languages. To make it even weirder, there are some places where English (instead of French) was obviously dubbed in on the film! I don't have a clue what they were thinking... even if it was not the original print. It really made no sense whatsoever.

The film's direction is definitely not in the traditional Hollywood style, but beyond that, I found it pretty difficult to follow. We follow a certain group of individuals for a while, then jump to a different group, then a different group, some in France, some in the US, etc. None of the characters are really developed very well. Sometimes you feel like you're watching a thriller, sometimes a docu-drama.

This is a spy film, yet there is nothing mentioned about the kind of spies they are, what secrets they might be stealing, what the dangers are, etc. -- just that they are Russian spies. I guess this is all we're supposed to care about. Also, this has to be the slowest-moving spy movie I've ever seen. The action and excitement is very, very minimal. This might have been all right had the plot and characters been engaging and fascinating, but unfortunately they just weren't.

It's not the worst movie ever, but it definitely is pretty strange language wise, and just not very interesting.

This is the perfect example of what Henri Verneuil could make in his second career part, international casts for prestigious movies, very well documented, accurate, complex, sometimes spectacular, ambitious.... In this espionage intrigue, you have plenty of actors from France (Noiret, Bouquet), America ( Fonda, Brynner), UK - Bogarde - and a semi documentary style that we'll see later for MILLE MILLIARDS DE DOLLARS and I COMME ICARE. Verneuil's cinema had nothing to do with the Nouvelle Vague but his strategy was assumed to be highly commercial. He was the most "American" french director. His talent was mostly in the directing than in the topic choices. He was a brilliant technician with no ideology nor message to claim, unlike many other French directors.