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"Psycho"(1960) and "The Kremlin Letter"(1970)

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
14 replies | jump to latest

I have a few side-channels of interest beyond Hitchcock and Psycho. One of them is the actor Richard Boone, who was a giant TV Western star of "Have Gun Will Travel" and a unique, boutique movie star for about ten years after the series. I take up Boone from time to time because I always found him to be a great actor with a huge fan base(all of us enraptured by his bigger-than-life, charismatic acting style) -- who never really became a top movie star.

The reason was pretty simple, I think: his rugged good looks faded pretty quickly into wrinkled ugliness. And he gained some weight after Have Gun. He practically forced himself into the character actor ranks.

But when Boone was great, he was great. Usually in Westerns, usually as a villain.

But in The Kremlin Letter, Boone's in a rare role for him: modern-day(a character actually says "this is 1969"), no moustache, hair dyed white-blond(to suggest old age, but to give Boone an entirely different look.)

You can go over to the Kremlin Letter page and see a lot of write-ups on it. Telegonus put some great stuff in there.

And I tossed in a post about how critic Vincent Canby of the NY Times pitted The Kremlin Letter against Hitchcock's Topaz(released only two months earlier, late 1969 to KL's early 1970) and found Hitchcock's film the better of the two Cold War tales.

I received a passel of favorite films as Xmas gifts(from a list I've made known to family and friends) and The Kremlin Letter was one of them. Which rekindled my interest in the film and allowed for a "stretch" to get The Kremlin Letter into comparative striking distance of Psycho. And quite seriously so.

The Kremlin Letter was directed by John Huston, who had his own auteur thing going. The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle. The African Queen -- and a few more classics. But also a whole lot of makework work for hire -- its like (unlike Hitchocck), John Huston became a famous-name director who didn't always make famous films. Very uneven career.

The Kremlin Letter "smacked of Hitchcock." The very Kremlin Letter itself SCREAMED "MacGuffin" -- practically a definition of the term(the film was from a novel, I suppose Hitchcock was offered it). This letter is of great importance to the US, to Russia, to China(its a letter that supposedly memorializes a joint declaration of war BY the US and Russia ON China, though exactly how that is supposed to happen, the movie doesn't say.) John Huston narrates his own trailer for "Kremlin Letter"(ala Hitchcock) and says: "Some idiot wrote this letter that could bring on World War III."

The Kremlin Letter -- like Torn Curtain and Topaz in a row for Hitchcock -- also smacked of a "movie sub-genre" of the international 60's and early 70's in film: Cold War thrillers about the dirty business of spying. The Manchurian Candidate, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, The Deadly Affair, The Quiller Memorandum -- as happens in Hollywood, there was a sudden copycat rush of these films. However tired Torn Curtain and Topaz may seem today, Hitchcock was as trendy with those as he was with the Willam Castle-inspired Psycho.

I think the connection I make of Psycho to The Kremlin Letter is the same connection I make to of Psycho to the movie of MASH: How the change of a decade (1959 to 1960 for Psycho, 1969 to 1970 for The Kremlin Letter and MASH) was a kind of "landmark" of change reflect in what kind of movies were being made, and how adult they could be.

But what a difference ten years makes. Psycho allowed for landmark views of women in underwear and toilets; and a landmark uptick in screen violence(a BIG bloody uptick) and in story content(transvestism -- or not; the killing, gutting, and stuffing of one's own mother, and then keeping her corpse around the house.)

But The Kremlin Letter(lets drop MASH for a moment) got to go farther in certain ways, because a new movie censorship code suddenly ALLOWED what had been forbidden, even for Psycho.

Funny thing, though: the new ratings code of 1968 allowed for cussing, nudity, simulated sex, ultra-violence(at the cost of an R rating) and The Kremlin Letter has none of that. (Well, strike that -- the film has one scene of murder, committed by Boone against blonde Bibi Anderson, that is ultra-violent; and another murder committed by Boone off-screen against Max Von Sydow that is even worse -- we can't be shown it.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

"MASH" DID have nudity, DID have simulated sex, DID have cussing("That f-in head is coming right off", yells one football player at another on the line.)

"The Kremlin Letter" instead revels in a the lurid: spies using heterosexual and homosexual seduction to entrap victims unto hostage-taking and death; spies pushing drugs upon people(often women) to enslave them to addiction; and a certain cruelty of "spy managers" of their own team members(pushing a young man and young woman into sexual romance and then separating them off, on orders -- to become literal prostitutes in order to advance the spy game. This angle of "The Kremlin Letter" summons up memories of Ingrid Bergman in Notorious and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest while adding yet another angle...a MALE spy(Patrick O'Neal) is forced to become a male prostitute for WOMEN to perform his spy mission.

George Sanders, a Hitchcock veteran(Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent) with a great sonorous voice, is in The Kremlin Letter, and his first scene is in drag -- lipstick, ladies wig and dress -- playing piano in a San Francisco gay bar rendered with now-ridiculous camp overkill by Huston(bad news for The Kremlin Letter today is that characters use several perjorative terms for gays during the film.) George Sanders in drag conjures up connections to Hitchcock in general and to Psycho in particular, and -- rather like Psycho did in a much less overt way -- makes some statements on the fluidity of sexuality. Gay themes had long been taboo and/or hidden under the Hays Code(see: Rope, Strangers on a Train, Leonard in NXNW, n)...but came 1970 and The Kremlin Letter...All Was Allowed. But portrayed poorly in this early effort.

Even with their ten-year difference, Psycho and The Kremlin Letter also share this: a brutally unsympathetic view of how the world is a harsh, cold place where you can get killed and nobody cares. And where hopes and love are dashed and destroyed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I think that is enough of a comparison to link Psycho across time to The Kremlin Letter and other films of that 60's/70s cusp that "boldly" allowed to explore R-rated material because they could.

Psycho was re-released to theaters in 1969 ("See the version of PSYCHO TV DARED NOT SHOW!") after the new rating system came in, but it got an "M"(today a "PG.") And yet in 1960, Psycho felt more LIKE an R. (The film is now, quite mysteriously, rated R on video packages even though it never had an R-rated theatrical release.)

Come to think of it, that 1969 re-release of Psycho (another landmark achievement for Psycho -- no movie had been shown on TV and THEN released to theaters again) put "Psycho" in movie theaters within a year of The Kremlin Letter and MASH and The Wild Bunch and other R-rated code-breakers; Psycho was right at home with them (in this, the year that Hitchcock's new release was the quite quaint Topaz.)

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

I like The Kremlin Letter, too, EC. Not as much as you do but I do. Richard Boone really sells it. Patrick O'Neal was a downer of an actor, and yet "on the other hand" that made him perfect for the lead. The script ought to have been tighter, the story stronger. I got the impression that director John Huston, despite his age, was, due to his shaggy artist cum envelope pushing personality and, especially, persona, rather having fun with the Sixties, or was when he was making the film. It's Cold War but Cold War gone way Out There, and Huston was in his element with that, as he was with The Maltese Falcon and, more fitfully, Beat The Devil. The List Of Adrian Messenger is another like that. Great, yet near borderline Camp, with the other two crossing over the border quite often.

Kremlin, though, deals with more serious real world issues even as it's genre (spy stuff and all that). A bourgeois take on the film would likely include the word tasteless, and I agree in that the film leaves a nasty taste in the viewer's mouth, such as movies can do these things. It ends mean. True to life? Perhaps. Still, awfully nasty, with Boone's character like a force of nature. His character was witty, fun, charming and irresistible in an All-American sort of way and yet in so many many respects he was pure evil as well. Boone's towering performance deserved a better movie, a great one. Although for all the money in the world I'd never "trade" Robert Shaw's work as Quint in Jaws for Boone in the same role in that film, as was "up in the air" for a while, Boone the actor deserved a picture at that level (classic, flawless in detail) that he could own, that his admirers could look back on decades later to show just how great he could be when he was on a roll, as it were.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I like The Kremlin Letter, too, EC. Not as much as you do but I do.

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Well, its just one of those things for me. I'm not even sure why it sends me so. I know its Boone, in the main -- but in THIS ROLE. He's in "The Night of the Following Day"(with Brando) the year before this, and his sadistic villain in that one is more "standard issue" even as Boone deliveries the lines with his usual style. But he's got his usual dark hair and moustache in "Night of the Following Day," no good ol' boy delivery, not nearly as many good lines("Kremlin Letter" was written for the screen by Huston himself, and his collaborator Gladys Hill, who would go on to adapt the more successful "Man Who Would Be King.")

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Richard Boone really sells it.

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There's something about Boone in The Kremlin Letter - how he looks, how he sounds, how he MOVES -- that I find to be the epitome of what great "star acting" is all about. Charisma. A certain delight in the watching and listening to. Boone is magnetic in this.

And so, in different ways, are George Sanders and Nigel Green , with their handsome faces and their spectacular British voices. We get two decidedly different beauties -- brunette American Barbara Parkins and blonde Swede Bibi Anderson -- and they are at once easy on the eyes and tragic figures. There's an old John Huston interview in a booklet in my Kremlin Letter DVD where he expresses surprise at its failure. He felt his own script was very good, and "the acting couldn't be better."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Patrick O'Neal was a downer of an actor, and yet "on the other hand" that made him perfect for the lead.

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Agreed. The more charismatic(and similar looking) James Coburn turned down the role, and with O'Neal in it, Boone could REALLY take over the movie(though I would have enjoyed hearing the Coburn and Boone voices in tandem.)

Rather like Frederick Stafford in Hitchcock's Topaz around the same time, the ostensible "romantic leading man" is NOT the lead of the movie. His "support" steals the show.

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The script ought to have been tighter, the story stronger.

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Like I said, in that interview , Huston praised his own script , and I think in ways he was right: the film is filled with punchy, pungent dialogue for the characters, like this exchange between O'Neal and Boone:

O'Neal: So we just scrub our mission and leave Moscow with our tails between our legs?
Boone: Nephew, there's a lot worse that could be between our legs. Win a few, lose a few. You can't win 'em all!

But as a matter of STORYTELLING, The Kremlin Letter is rather a mess, and Huston(again like Hitchcock with Topaz), seems intent on making key action sequences come to cinematic nothing -- the death of George Sanders is basically filmed from 100 yards away, with a stunt double, its a bumbled sequence. (In Topaz, the corollary is the attack on Jarre and the newspaper reporter that is only DESCRIBED, not shown.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I got the impression that director John Huston, despite his age, was, due to his shaggy artist cum envelope pushing personality and, especially, persona, rather having fun with the Sixties, or was when he was making the film.

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Its a grim film where horrible things are done to people in the name of "winning the Cold War," but Huston is rather amused by it all, and the attitudes of Boone, Sanders, and Green's characters show that amusement.

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t's Cold War but Cold War gone way Out There,

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Way, way, WAY out there...with Boone at one point dropping the good ol' boy routine to threaten a Russian official about what will be done to his daughter: "If you don't cooperate, we will turn her into the most depraved human being you can imagine." We feel for the poor Russian official -- but then we learn he was a big torture/execution man for Stalin. Both sides are awful, sayeth Huston, and there are no rules of conduct.

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and Huston was in his element with that, as he was with The Maltese Falcon and, more fitfully, Beat The Devil. The List Of Adrian Messenger is another like that. Great, yet near borderline Camp, with the other two crossing over the border quite often.

The Asphalt Jungle was also cited as an influence on The Kremlin Letter, this time with a gang of spies instead of thieves.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

In that John Huston interview in the DVD booklet, he expresses great surprise that Kremlin Letter failed at the box office. "It had the elements of the late sixties," he notes, "lurid sex and violence." Notice that he isn't thinking about the box office that spaceships and T-Rexes get you!

But Huston seems basically out of touch, there. Of COURSE it would fail at the box office, once word of mouth got out about how horrible the characters were and how horrifiyingly downbeat the end is. What saves the movie is that cast -- Boone uber alles -- and , of all things, its great polished cinematography(which Huston ALSO praised in his interview.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Kremlin, though, deals with more serious real world issues even as it's genre (spy stuff and all that). A bourgeois take on the film would likely include the word tasteless, and I agree in that the film leaves a nasty taste in the viewer's mouth, such as movies can do these things. It ends mean. True to life? Perhaps. Still, awfully nasty,

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Yep. I suppose the novel was this way to start, but Huston hammers home the idea that the spy world is a Full Employment Center for Depraved Sadists. You've got side issues like Boone pairing O'Neal with Parkins, watching a romance develop between them -- and then assigning each of them to seduce and hang with OTHER PEOPLE. Boone then just sits back and watches O'Neal and Parkins in agony. (Its Notorious with more sex.)

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with Boone's character like a force of nature. His character was witty, fun, charming and irresistible in an All-American sort of way and yet in so many many respects he was pure evil as well.

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That sums it up very, very well, telegonus. Near the end, Boone gets sweet brutal revenge on a really bad Russian("If there is a way for you to pay right now with a level of pain to match that of all the men you tortured and killed, I will find it") and he's a "good guy". But in the next scene, he is the epitiome of evil. Its one of the great movie characters, you ask me. Boone's greatest hour -- but not a classic movie.

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Boone's towering performance deserved a better movie, a great one.

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Yep. This happens some times. I dunno, maybe Boone felt that with John Huston at the helm, he owed the famed director the best he could do, even if Huston was off his own game. That white hair and shaved moustache added to the effect: this was NOT the Richard Boone we were used to on screen.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Although for all the money in the world I'd never "trade" Robert Shaw's work as Quint in Jaws for Boone in the same role in that film, as was "up in the air" for a while,

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As I recall, Boone was sought hard for the villain role in The Sting(1973) and turned it down. Robert Shaw got it, and The Sting got Robert Shaw the role of Quint in Jaws (after Lee Marvin turned it down.) Boone was likely in the "casting mix" for awhile, but by 1975, he was more of a TV actor again(Hec Ramsey, TV movies.)

And I'd agree. The craggy and wrinkled Richard Boone of 1975 would have been too familiar in the role of Quint, doing too much of his "standard Richard Boone thing." Jaws benefitted enormously from having a less well-known, younger and somewhat more virile man in the part, with British(or was it Irish?) roots.

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Boone the actor deserved a picture at that level (classic, flawless in detail) that he could own, that his admirers could look back on decades later to show just how great he could be when he was on a roll, as it were.

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And I think that The Kremlin Letter may be about the best Boone ever got. His next movie after that -- Big Jake -- was fun, and one critic said that Boone was there "the best villain in all of John Wayne's movies." True enough, but Boone doesn't get a lot of scenes in Big Jake, and the production is less prestigious than The Kremlin Letter.

After "Big Jake," it was a slow fade-out for Boone. Hec Ramsey. TV movies. Lesser Westerns (one, called "God's Gun" was quit by Boone halfway through making it, and he is DUBBED in his scenes.) Boone did a one-two-three series of cameos in The Shootist(Wayne's last film), The Big Sleep(a remake), and Winterkills(that crazy movie with Jeff Bridges and Tony Perkins), but there was little for him to do in any of them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And even BEFORE The Kremlin Letter, Richard Boone at the movies didn't always get the best work. Hombre would seem to be the classic, but that is Paul Newman's movie and Boone disappears in the second act for some time. I very much like "Rio Conchos" -- Boone's sole lead in an action Western -- but it is no classic. Etc. Etc. Etc.

No, I think Richard Boone was a great actor who never really got a great movie.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

EC: As Richard Boone fanboys we may have to settle for Hombre as his finest hour (or two hours) in a feature film; and Paul Newman vehicle it may be, Boone's wonderfully named Cicero Grimes steals it from Paul; and not because he was trying to,--it was Newman who was trying with a capital T, but Boone's more relaxed, natural style of acting made him seem more real than the serious minded rest of the cast, good players all, each striving to do his or her best. Boone's line readings are some of the best and most memorable I can recall from any actor in any film ("now just what do you think hell is gonna look like?").

Years ago, in a discussion with my father and cousin we got to talking about films and out of the blue one of them, cousin most likely, declared that big as the star leads were in The Sting it was Robert Shaw who stole the film. Even I felt that, watching the picture in a second run house a good year after its release, and before Jaws. I'm curious about your description of Shaw as, while obviously a few years younger than Boone, and in vastly better physical condition, even as he wasn't a truly big guy, as "somewhat more virile" (than Boone). Interesting remark, and while I'm not arguing with it, may even agree with you in certain areas, I wonder what it is. Shaw was more aggressive than Boone on screen; and he had that rough, cracked voice when angry; and his temper was like the wrath of God. Yet I have to wonder what makes him more virile than Richard Boone.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

EC: As Richard Boone fanboys we may have to settle for Hombre as his finest hour (or two hours) in a feature film;

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Yes, probably so. I favor Boone in The Kremlin Letter because he just owns it as "the main draw" and because there is something about that white hair/no stache look that stands out, but few people know The Kremlin Letter and a LOT of people know Hombre.

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and Paul Newman vehicle it may be, Boone's wonderfully named Cicero Grimes steals it from Paul; and not because he was trying to,--it was Newman who was trying with a capital T,

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Yes, I like Newman in Hombre, but he has to work hard at what came naturally to McQueen and WOULD come naturally to Eastwood and Bronson.

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but Boone's more relaxed, natural style of acting made him seem more real than the serious minded rest of the cast, good players all, each striving to do his or her best. Boone's line readings are some of the best and most memorable I can recall from any actor in any film ("now just what do you think hell is gonna look like?").

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In his first scene where Boone seeks to coerce a stagecoach ticket out of Newman(after making one of the great Menacing Villain Entrances in screen history) and elects to go after a protesting Cavalry man instead, watch how he shifts from amiable and smiling to cold-blooded threat in a few sentences. Master class.

I've read a lot of reviews of movies with Boone in them(just as I have of Hitchcock films) and Boone INVARIABLY got good notices, usually the best of any cast he was in. Though I recall this tsk-tsk from LA Times critic Charles Champlin about The Kremlin Letter: "Once again, as in The Night of the Following Day last year, Richard Boone plays a menacing sadist, and once again, it is a excruciating waste of his formidable talent."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Years ago, in a discussion with my father and cousin we got to talking about films and out of the blue one of them, cousin most likely, declared that big as the star leads were in The Sting it was Robert Shaw who stole the film. Even I felt that, watching the picture in a second run house a good year after its release, and before Jaws.

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Well, Shaw is a great villain, with a great villain's catch phrase "Ya fallah?" ("You follow?") He's also got a great Irish accent and a limp(the limp was real; Shaw sprained his ankle playing racquetball before filming started and they just put it in the movie.)

In the great funny-scary scene in which Newman continually insults Shaw in that trainboard poker game, Newman gets the comedy but we are always worried about Shaw -- how can Newman keep insulting this guy and stay alive? (Boone would have been fine, too, but Shaw was NEW.)

The whole suspense of The Sting is: can both Redford(placed dangerously , physically close to Shaw and his goons in most scenes) and Newman(always verbally insulting the man) keep the sting in play long enough to take Shaw before he either figures it out or kills them? Shaw IS the sting.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm curious about your description of Shaw as, while obviously a few years younger than Boone, and in vastly better physical condition, even as he wasn't a truly big guy, as "somewhat more virile" (than Boone). Interesting remark, and while I'm not arguing with it, may even agree with you in certain areas, I wonder what it is. Shaw was more aggressive than Boone on screen; and he had that rough, cracked voice when angry; and his temper was like the wrath of God. Yet I have to wonder what makes him more virile than Richard Boone.

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Oh, I dunno. Its just that by the time Jaws came out, Richard Boone's face was badly wrinkled(with a big drinker's nose) and he'd put weight on, and he seemed to be tiring. The younger Shaw could play Quint as an Old Salt with a surprisingly youthful vigor and handsomeness (especially when his shirt is open.)

The year after Jaws, Shaw put his new stardom in jeopardy with a potboiler called Swashbuckler. Playing a pirate captain and often attired in a skintight red outfit with shirt open to the waist, Shaw was called about to be a ROMANTIC lead(in the Errol Flynn tradition), swordfight, and romance Genevieve Bujold. I expect I flashed on Swashbuckler when thinking about a "virile" Robert Shaw. And no way Richard Boone could have played THAT part. At least in 1976(Boone's in The Shootist that year, and looking pretty mangy.)

But it was no big belief....Shaw as virile. I was just makin' conversation..hah!