Night Flight from Moscow

Night Flight from Moscow
Film poster under title Le Serpent
Directed by	Henri Verneuil
Produced by	Henri Verneuil
Written by	Henri Verneuil Gilles Perrault
Starring	Yul Brynner Henry Fonda
Music by	Ennio Morricone
Cinematography	Claude Renoir
Edited by	Pierre Gillette
Distributed by	Pathfinder Pictures
Release dates	7 April 1973
Running time	113 minutes
Country	France, Italy, West Germany
Language	English French German

Night Flight from Moscow (also known as Le Serpent^[1]) is a French thriller made in 1973. It was produced and directed by Henri Verneuil. The score was written by Ennio Morricone.

Plot

Aleksey Teodorovic Vlassov (Yul Brynner) is a high ranking KGB official who defects while in France. He has with him highly-classified information as part of a deal with Western intelligence for his arrival in the United States. The debriefing is held at Langley by DCI Allan Davies (Henry Fonda) and MI6 representative Philip Boyle (Dirk Bogarde). Vlassov hands off a list of enemy agents in Western Europe including a deep penetration into NATO. Davies wants to begin operations to take down the agents; however, those on the list suddenly begin to die off. The CIA also has suspicions over the authenticity of Vlassov's claims. The CIA discovers that a defection photo of Vlassov was taken in the Soviet Union, not in Turkey, judging from the contours of Mt. Ararat in the background. Vlassov also fails a lie detector test after he angrily protests about sexual related questions asked by the CIA during the test.

Cast

Reception

A contemporary review by Tony Mastroianni in the Cleveland Press stated this film about espionnage demonstrated how already in 1973 the computer had replaced the dagger. The reviewer also concluded the film had "more good moments than bad".^[2]

References

External links

• Night Flight from Moscow at the Internet Movie Database
• Night Flight from Moscow at AllMovie
• Trailer