The Russia House | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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Directed by | Fred Schepisi |
Produced by | Paul Maslansky Neil Canton Fred Schepisi |
Written by | Tom Stoppard |
Based on | The Russia House by John le Carré |
Starring | Sean Connery Michelle Pfeiffer Roy Scheider James Fox John Mahoney J. T. Walsh Klaus Maria Brandauer |
Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
Cinematography | Ian Baker |
Editing by | Beth Jochem Besterveld Peter Honess |
Studio | Pathé Entertainment |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date(s) | December 25, 1990 |
Running time | 122 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $22,998,000 (USA) |
The Russia House (1990) is an American spy drama, based on the novel of the same name by John le Carré. It was directed by Fred Schepisi, and starred Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, with Roy Scheider, James Fox, John Mahoney, and Klaus Maria Brandauer in supporting roles.
It was filmed on location in the Soviet Union, only the second American motion picture to do so before the dissolution of the socialist state (the first being the 1988 film Red Heat).[1]
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Bartholomew "Barley" Scott Blair (Sean Connery), the head of a British publishing firm, is on a business trip to Moscow. He attends a writers' retreat where he speaks of an inevitable New World Order on its way and an end to tension with the West. Attentively listening is a man called Dante (Klaus Maria Brandauer), who wants to be convinced that Barley means what he says. It transpires that Dante has secretly written a book about the Soviet Union's true nuclear missile capabilities.
A few months later, unable to locate Barley at a sales fair, a Russian woman named Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer) asks another publishing company's representative, Niki Landau (Nicholas Woodeson), to pass along a very important manuscript. Niki sneaks a look at the book and delivers it to British government authorities instead.
British intelligence agents and American CIA agents track Barley to his holiday flat in Lisbon, then interrogate him to see how he knows Katya. They realize he is as much in the dark as they are, so Ned (James Fox), gives him some fundamental training as a spy. The British MI6 agents realize that the manuscript is of vital importance to the USA, so they start working with the CIA, with both agencies wanting Barley to work on their behalf.
Barley returns to the USSR to seek out Dante and confirm that he is genuine. He meets with Katya, with whom he is instantly smitten. Through her, he confirms that Dante is a brilliant scientist whose actual name is Yakov. He also denies to Katya's face that he is a spy.
At the first phase, the British run the operation, while informing the CIA on its results. The CIA team in the United States, headed by Russell (Roy Scheider), is concerned because the book states that the Soviet nuclear missile program is in very bad shape, and therefore there's no real reason for an arms race to continue.
Katya sets up a face-to-face meeting with "Dante," going to great lengths to avoid being followed. Barley explains that the sensitive manuscript is now in the hands of British and American authorities. Yakov feels betrayed, but Barley convinces him that the book can still be published, which was the author's objective in the first place.
Dante is clearly disappointed by Barley's trust of the authorities, explaining that government people (of whatever country) are only driven by their own interests, not caring about simple people. Nevertheless, Dante gives Barley another volume to the manuscript after Barley assures him that he's sympathetic to the cause.
Impressed by the additional volume, Russell's boss Brady (John Mahoney) and a U.S. military officer named Quinn (J.T. Walsh) personally question Barley, wanting to be certain where his loyalties lie. Russell then travels to London to monitor Barley's progress. He declares that he would help the British operation out of a true ideological belief in Glasnost, although this would not be good news to his "customers" of the weapons industry, who need an arms race for continued prosperity.
Convinced that Dante's manuscripts are truthful, the CIA and MI6 come up with a list of questions (a so-called "shopping list"), which is meant to extract as much information of the USSR as Dante could provide. On that point, irregularities begin to emerge, but the joint British-American team rationalizes them, except for Barley's "Russia House" handler Ned, who senses something amiss.
Barley, by now fully in love with Katya, wants to keep nothing from her; he admits that he is spying. Katya, in return, confirms that Yakov is not acting like himself, fearing that he may be under KGB observation or control. She gives Barley the address where Yakov will be staying when he is in Moscow.
Barley is under full British-American surveillance as he takes the shopping list to Yakov's apartment. Ned suddenly concludes that the Soviets know all about the operation and that they only let it run because they want to put their hands on the list. He realizes that if they get the questions, they will know exactly what the British and Americans know - just based on what they were asking.
Ned is now convinced that Barley has made a deal to turn over the questions to the USSR. Russell disagrees with Ned completely and instructs the assignment to proceed as planned. The British-American team expects the meeting with Yakov to last 2–3 hours, but when Barley doesn't return after 7 hours, Russell must admit that he was wrong. They must now do damage control, pretending that the questions were deliberately false.
Barley, meanwhile, has left a note for Ned. He explains that during a prearranged phone call to Katya, he used a code word to let her know that Yakov has been captured or is dead, and that her life is also in danger. Barley has traded the shopping list to the Russians in exchange for the freedom of Katya's family. He admits to the British and Americans that it might be unfair, but as he writes to Ned: "You shouldn't open other people's letters."
Barley returns to his flat in Lisbon, where he waits for a ship to dock that brings Katya and her family to begin a new life with him.
The Russia House was filmed on location in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia,[2] the first major American production to be filmed substantially in the Soviet Union.[1] The final scenes were filmed on location in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Russia House | |||
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Film score by Jerry Goldsmith | |||
Released | 11 December 1990 | ||
Recorded | 1990 | ||
Genre | Soundtrack | ||
Length | 61:34 | ||
Professional reviews | |||
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The critically acclaimed music to The Russia House was composed and conducted by veteran composer Jerry Goldsmith. The score featured a unique mixture of Russian music and jazz to complement the nationalities and characteristics of the two main characters. The soundtrack was released 11 December 1990 through MCA Records and features seventeen tracks of score at a running time just over sixty-one minutes.[3] The score also features Branford Marsalis on saxophone.
The Russia House currently holds a score of 69% on Rotten Tomatoes,[4] indicating a generally positive critical reception.
Hal Hinson in the Washington Post wrote: "Making a picture about the political situation in a country as much in flux as the Soviet Union can be disastrous, but the post-glasnost realities here seem plausible and up to the minute. The Russia House doesn't sweep you off your feet; it works more insidiously than that, flying in under your radar. If it is like any of its characters, it's like Katya. It's reserved, careful to declare itself but full of potent surprises. It's one of the year's best films."[5] Peter Travers in Rolling Stone wrote: "At its best, The Russia House offers a rare and enthralling spectacle: the resurrection of buried hopes."[6] Time Out less enthusiastically wrote: "Overtaken by East-West events, and with an over-optimistic ending which sets personal against political loyalty, it's still highly enjoyable, wittily written, and beautiful to behold in places, at others somehow too glossy for its own good."[7]
Tom Stoppard's adapted screenplay was criticised by Vincent Canby in the New York Times: "There is evidence of Mr. Stoppard's wit in the dialogue, but the lines are not easily spoken, which is not to say that they are unspeakable. They are clumsy."[8] Roger Ebert held a similar view in the Chicago Sun-Times: "What's good are the few emotional moments that break out of the weary spy formula: Connery declaring his love for Pfeiffer, or the British and Americans getting on each other's nerves. But these flashes of energy are isolated inside a screenplay that is static and boring, that drones on lifelessly through the le Carré universe, like some kind of space probe that continues to send back random information long after its mission has been accomplished."[9]
Sean Connery was praised for his portrayal of Barley, "bluff, incorrigible, jazz-loving... his finest performance in ages."[7] Variety wrote: "As the flawed, unreliable publisher, Connery is in top form."[1] Peter Travers in Rolling Stone thought he captured "the 'splendid quiet' that le Carré found in Blair."[6] Hal Hinson in the Washington Post wrote: "This may be the most complex character Connery has ever played, and without question it's one of his richest performances. Connery shows the melancholy behind Barley's pickled charm, all the wasted years and unkept promises."[5] Desson Howe, also in the Washington Post, wrote: "Sean Connery, like Anthony Quinn, takes a role like a vitamin pill, downs it, then goes about his bighearted business of making the part his idiosyncratic own."[10] However, he received criticism from the New York Times, who thought that the "usually magnetic Mr. Connery... is at odds with Barley, a glib, lazy sort of man who discovers himself during this adventure. Mr. Connery goes through the movie as if driving in second gear."[8]
Michelle Pfeiffer also garnered critical plaudits for delivering "the film's most persuasive performance... Miss Pfeiffer, sporting a credible Russian accent, brings to it a no-nonsense urgency that is missing from the rest of the movie,"[8] according to the New York Times. Desson Howe in the Washington Post wrote: "As Katya, a mother who risks her love to smuggle a document and falls for a Westerner in the process, her gestures are entirely believable, her accent (at least to one set of Western ears) is quietly perfect."[10] Peter Travers in Rolling Stone wrote that "Pfeiffer, who gets more subtle and incisive with each film, is incandescent as Katya."[6] Hal Hinson in the Washington Post congratulated her for portraying a rounded character: "Her triumph goes beyond her facility with the Russian accent; other actresses could have done that. She's great at playing contradictions, at being tough yet yielding, cloaked yet open, direct yet oblique. What's she's playing, we suspect, is the great Russian game of hide-and-seek. But Pfeiffer gives it a personal dimension. Katya holds herself in check, but her wariness, one senses, is as much personal as it is cultural -- the result, perhaps, of her own secret wounds. It's one of the year's most full-blooded performances."[5] However, Pfeiffer also had her detractors. Variety thought that her "Russian accent proves very believable but she has limited notes to play."[1] Time Out wrote that "Pfeiffer can act, but her assumption of a role for which her pouty glamour is inappropriate - a Russian office-worker seen rubbing shoulders in the bus queues - is a jarring note."[7]
Fred Schepisi was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.[11][12]
Michelle Pfeiffer was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama, but lost to Kathy Bates in Misery (1990).[12]
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