The Russia House

Plot synopsis:
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 near Peredelkino where he speaks of an end to tensions with the West. Attentively listening is a mysterious man called "Dante" (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Dante later demands from Barley a promise to do the right thing if the opportunity arises.
A few months later, unable to locate Barley at a trade show, a beautiful young Soviet woman named Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer) asks publisher Nicky Landau (Nicholas Woodeson) to give Barley an important manuscript in her possession. Landau sneaks a look at the manuscript and delivers it to British government authorities. The manuscript is a document detailing the Soviet Union's capability for waging nuclear war. An investigation reveals "Dante" is in fact renowned Soviet physicist Yakov Saveleyev and the author of the manuscript.
British intelligence officers track Barley to his holiday flat in Lisbon, Portugal and interrogate him as to how he knows Katya. They realize he is as much in the dark as they are. MI6 realizes that the manuscript is also of vital importance to the American CIA, with both agencies wanting Barley to work on their behalf. British agent Ned (James Fox) then gives Barley some fundamental training as a spy.
Barley returns to the Soviet Union to seek out Dante/Yakov and confirm he is a genuine informant. He meets with Katya, with whom he is instantly smitten. Through her, he confirms that Dante is indeed the brilliant scientist Saveleyev. Barley also denies to Katya that he is a spy.
The British run the operation through its first phase while apprising the CIA of its results. The CIA team, headed by Russell (Roy Scheider), is worried because the manuscript states that the Soviet nuclear missile programme is in complete disarray, which suggests the United States has engaged in a useless arms race.
Katya sets up a meeting with Dante, going to great lengths to avoid being followed. Barley explains that the manuscript is now in the hands of British and American authorities. Yakov feels betrayed, but Barley convinces him that the manuscript can still be published. Dante gives Barley another volume of the manuscript after Barley assures him that he's sympathetic to the scientist's cause.
Impressed by the additional volume, Russell's boss Brady (John Mahoney) and U.S. military officer Quinn (J. T. Walsh) interrogate Barley to be certain where his loyalties lie. Russell states 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 "shopping list" list of questions which is meant to extract as much strategic warfare information as Dante can provide. "Russia House" handler Ned senses something is amiss with Barley but the British-American team continues with its plans.
Barley returns to Russia and declares his love to Katya and admits he is an operative. Katya confesses that Yakov is not acting like himself and fears 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 steal the 'shopping list' to learn exactly what the British and Americans know.
Ned is now convinced that Barley has made a deal to turn over the questions to the USSR. Russell disagrees and instructs the assignment to proceed as planned. The British-American team expects the meeting with Yakov to last a short time, but when Barley doesn't return after seven hours, Russell admits he was wrong. The team must now pretend the questions were deliberately false.
Barley, meanwhile, sends a note to Ned explaining that during a pre-arranged phone call to Katya, Dante used a code word to let her know that he had been compromised by the KGB and that her life is in danger. Barley admits he traded the shopping list to the Russians in exchange for the safety and freedom of Katya and her family. He admits that his actions might be unfair, but tells Ned, "you shouldn't open other people's letters."
Barley returns to his flat in Lisbon, where he waits for Katya and her family to begin a new life with him.

Tags: romantic

Review:
The first western movie filmed in the Soviet Union, The Russia House is better defined as a love story than as a spy thriller.
However, the true star of this understated romance is James Fox, who plays the British contact for Connery's Scott Blair and the foil for the CIA's Scheider character in such gentlemanly fashion as to make the audience believe the true Bond-style gentleman-spy really does exist in this world.
From the beautiful scenery to perhaps the best and most haunting soundtrack of any movie--ever (reviews abound--just look them up, friends--easily the great Jerry Goldsmith's finest work), the Russia House is a truly mysterious and romantic movie..
The suspense, which is remarkably sustained (those rich long tracking shots of people walking through public places to uncertain destinations to meet with, or maybe not meet with shadow characters who may be allies or enemies) is the truer suspense of the uncertainty of living in a gray, gray world...where nothing much happens, but peril is part of the fabric of mundane life.(Those sequences are gorgeous....the colors of autumn in a Leningrad park, the closeups of the stone gargoyles....the moody circular stepping pace of the soundtrack....Branford Marsalis' saxophone.) Someone has said here that it is talky.
Of the eight or so that have been adapted, four have made great films: The Spy Who Came into the Cold, The Russia House, and the two George Smiley BBC miniseries.
And they are blessed with lead performances by three great actors at the top of the form - Richard Burton, Sean Connery and Alec Guiness (Guiness especially...to watch him for six hours in Smiley's People is one of the great pleasures).A beautifully efficient and elegant translation by Tom Stoppard of a great novel, wonderfully dignified and touching performances by Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer (never seen her better), a beautiful soundtrack by a second tier composer graced by the presence of a real jazz master, a terrific evocation of a place and time....a very moving film..
As a great admirer of John Le Carre, I watched this film with high expectations & although the story wasn't the usual Le Carre (such as 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold'), I enjoyed it immensely.
If, on the other hand, you are looking for a complex story set at the sunset of Soviet Russia, with an incomparable musical score and believable characters you can accept as the real thing, rent or buy this movie.
The Russia House is a superior spy romance movie which falls short of being great.
Additionally a couple of factors have been unkind to it over time.Connery and Pfeiffer are excellant; the large cast are almost uniformly outstanding (except perhaps Roy Scheider, who I usually like, but who seems a bit over the top in his role here); the Moscow scenery and end of the Cold War feel are great, and the main characters are easy to like, if difficult to outright love.
When I said that time has been unkind to The Russia House, I meant two things: firstly that the unfortunate timing of the movie's release, a year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, ensured that it would be dated almost immediately.
More significantly, a growing portion of the film's potential audience didn't live through the late Soviet Era, and the nuances of concepts like Glasnost, and why Perestroika makes it hard  for Pfeiffer to do her shoe-shopping aren't going to mean a thing to anyone much under 30.But that's not the movie's fault.
The casting is dead-on with a frumpy Connery playing a middle-aged British book publisher whose love of Russia draws him in to a very high-stakes espionage caper at the end of the Cold War.
The much missed Connery (He's retired from acting now, believe it or not) does a sterling job as the amateur spy who doesn't know what side he's on, and sex-on-legs Pfeiffer has a dead-on Russian accent.
Michelle Pfeiffer plays one of her greatest performances and Sean Connery and Kalus Maria Brandauer have also very remarkable roles.
James Fox' character (Ned) was well developed, as he grew increasingly more aware of the goings-on on both sides and even more aware of old "Barley's" persona and why he was doing what he was doing.Michelle Pfeiffer impressed me with the interpretation of her role and with her facility with the Russian dialect/accent.
There are memorable performances from Sean Connery (Barley) and Michel Pfeiffer(Katya), the beautiful Russian heroine.
I don't understand why this movie doesn't get better reviews, it is an excellent adaptation of John LeCarre's novel.Sean Connery is wonderful as Scott "Barley" Blair, as is Michelle Pfeiffer as Katya.
It is imaginatively filmed, it has a great screenplay (written by Tom Stoppard), and is very true (within the limitations of two hours) to the novel.Its an excellent, intelligent, spy story.Note: The ending was changed, slightly from the novel, and the character of Harry Palfrey was excised..
Fabulous performances by Connery and Pfeiffer make their love totally believable and enviable.Truly a unique piece of film..
Sean Connery, in a wonderfully nuanced performance, plays "Barley", a tousled book publisher who looks like a retired English professor.
Despite certain divergences in character and plot, this movie version of "The Russia House" does do justice to John Le Carre's twisted tale.
It's only the morning after finishing one of his novels, or the hour after watching a movie adaptation such as this, that one's head begins to throb with the bitter, pointless, imbecility of his world view.The cast of "The Russia House," headlined by Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, is superb, with one glaring exception -- Roy Scheider in pancake makeup is simply not plausible as a CIA manager, even mid level.
But this movie is mainly worth watching for the engaging lead performances by Connery and Pfeiffer, even though (or perhaps because) they play their characters quite differently than they were drawn in the book.The location photography is excellent, with nice views of Lisbon, and many long sequences shot in Moscow and Leningrad.
A superb novel by John le Carre and faithfully transferred to the big screen by Tom Stoppard, this film should be remembered as one of the all-time greats.Katya Orlova, played exquisitely by Michelle Pfeiffer, was, and remains a character of love, intelligence, courage and beauty.
Ms Pfeiffer was simply brilliant in the role, and totally convincing.The leading character, a debauched upper-class English publisher played by Sean Connery was also totally convincing and a joy to watch.
He becomes a man.An extremely amusing cameo performance was delivered by (I think) Ken Russell, and one which I will remember forever.As for the rest of the cast all I can say is that they all performed to the same exemplary standards as the leading actors.Overall, this gets my vote as the best movie of all time!.
This is a classic cold war movie with an excellent plot, and fascinating characters played by some really good American and British actors.
Sean Connery is Barley Blair, a British publisher who has a love for Russia and visits the old Soviet Union regularly.
Set at the end of the Cold War, just as Gorbachev is beginning to open the Soviet Union to the West, Blair is conscripted against his will to work with Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer), a Russian publisher who has sent him a manuscript which actually contains Soviet military secrets.
Praise, however, be to Tom Stoppard for what is probably the best description Sean Connery will ever give of himself, be it on screen or in real life: "I look like a large unmade bed with a shopping bag attached." Other than that line, there is only Roy Scheider to keep you amused.
Sean Connery's name heading the cast should have guaranteed box office and I'm sure a few people paid for movie tickets for Russia House.Unfortunately what they got was one two hour long boring story.
A little May/December romance evolves between Connery and Pheiffer, but it doesn't save the story.If you're expecting James Bond from Russia House, don't bother.
Connery is fairly good in his role but he could have played the part with a little more laid back attitude , Pfeiffer is great as is Klaus Marie Brandauer but whose idea was it to cast Ken Russell and Martin Clunes ?
The problem I had with THE RUSSIA HOUSE is that John Le Carre novels are not a good source material for films , they`re far too literary with lots of scenes of characters discussing espionage strategy and the human condition and this is no different .
Take three good actors, Sean Connery, Klaus Maria Brandauer, and Michelle Pfeiffer, allow them to create memorable, unique characters who interact in a melancholy, sadly beautiful, disintegrating Leningrad and have Jerry Goldsmith compose a ravishing score with Wynton Marsalis playing the theme.
The souffle will never rise to what it might have been.What could have been perfection must be viewed with a discerning eye: I'd watch it for the grown up love story, the cynical idealism of Brandauer and Connery's characters and the urban Russian settings--grand and squalid, all at the same time, like this movie.
Sean Connery as well as the entire cast performed effectively to define a man (Barley Scott Blair) who's life was essentially empty until he became a "Good Man" to a mysterious Russian author.
John Mahoney's Brady is your prototypical CIA executive, i.e., use your charm to get to the finish line no matter the cost to the pawns in the game.I recall reading years ago a comment by Schepisi in which he said this was the first western movie that was permitted to film inside Russia, following the Gorbachev reforms.
Actually, Connery's fingering and breathing during those posed solos looked pretty realistic.For Schepisi to coordinate this complex melange of story, actors, locations and music, and come up with a work of art that exceeds the sum of its parts, well, he deserved a lot more recognition and acclaim than he was given.
As far as I am concerned, this is the movie that actually deserves to be called "From Russia With Love" - a realistic, nuanced spy thriller that becomes a poignant, genuinely moving love story that defeats and outlives, despite all olds, the rotten old world - like a flower growing through the Berlin wall and blooming after that wall is long gone.
Somehow, The Russia House manages to combine and contrast the cerebral, cynical world of Cold War era spy games with a richly atmospheric and an impossibly moving love story.
The honesty with which this story is told: from actual locations (one of the first British/American movies filmed in Russia), to the mature and realistic storytelling, to rich and truthful performances, makes that cold-vs-hot contrast all the more vivid.
I Love It. The Russia House (1990)Plot In A Paragraph: Small time, alcoholic London book publisher Barley Blair (Connery) an expatriate British publisher unexpectedly finds himself working for the CIA and MI6 to investigate people in Russia.The Movie is brilliantly cast, Connery in what did lol like a $10 wig, due to its dishevelled, thinning appearance, gives a very relaxed performance and has a twinkle in his eye.
Michelle Pfeiffer makes a splendid natural beauty Katya, Klaus Maria Michelle Brandauer is fantastic (how did this man not get more work??) Roy Schindler (inexplicably in his last great role) is brilliant as the head of the CIA, John Mahoney is great as is Edward Fox as the head of MI6.I love Jerry Goldsmith's score, it is beautiful.
A gentle, aging hedonist, who looks, stealing a line from the film "like an unmade bed with a shopping bag attached." Connery is entertaining and engaging in every frame, truly inhabiting Barley as an original character.Pfeiffer is very good, if not at her best as the Russian woman beholden by secrets and restrained by crippling caution.
The other great strength The Russia House has, which has sustained the film as watchable and re-watchable over time, is the large supporting cast of male actors portraying the MI6 and CIA spooks who Barley haphazardly encounters, and very quickly takes direction from.
James Fox, Roy Scheider, John Mahoney, Michael Kitchen and an almost SNL-flamboyant Ian McNeice (as the riotously out-of-place Merrydew) provide a fantastical espionage-ical Greek chorus that set off Connery's ethical and emotional contretemps.The film's final potent ingredient is a solo supporting performance by Klaus Maria Brandauer as "(code name) Dante," a mysterious Russian who seems to be behind the searching questions the men in grey directing Barley seem to have.
Katya Orlova (Michelle Pfeiffer) passes along a manuscript intended for minor publisher boozy Barley Blair (Sean Connery).
British agent Ned (James Fox) and CIA Russell (Roy Scheider) lead the effort to make contact with Dante and determine the validity of the information.This movie does get a good sense of a period of time in Russia.
In the RUSSIA HOUSE Sean Connery as Barley Blair investigates the origin of three notebooks that a defector has sent to British Intelligence containing Russian Military secrets.
The movie would have been completely sunk, had it not been for the strong performances by its principles, Sean Connery as Barley and Michelle Pfeiffer as Katya.
Ok, this movie has some great actors (Connery, Pfeiffer and Brandauer) and with that a story combined, make a huge potential to be put onscreen.
In "The Russia House" the entire movie has a plot cut down to only a few moments of talking and walking and love, which isn't bad, but was made bad through the directors artistic feeling for this picture.
As well some scenes (especially in the beginning when Connery is in Lisbon in an interrogation) take very long to be established because the director showed them several times, just with different angles and dialogue which do not further the story or character.If only some of the more suspenseful scenes (they weren't that suspenseful) were shot to be suspenseful, even just for the cause to be suspenseful, this movie would have been much better and I would have rated it sure above 5 points..
The LeCarré novel is among the best cold war book ever written because it has everything: a wonderful romance, an acid but true analysis of international relations...This movie adaptation is a real winner because it pushes the audio and visual elements to high levels: the cast is wonderful between old, grumpy Connery, cute Pfeiffer and cool British / excited, falcons American players...
The romance between his character, Barley, and the Russian go-between, Katya, is earnestly portrayed by both Connery and Pfeiffer.
A "thinking-man's" suspense film, it contains performances by Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer that are among their best.
for me,this adaptation of A John le Carr'e novel is nothing spectacular.in fact,i found it boring and hard to follow.plus,i didn't find any of the character compelling.and there were many predictable moments as well.i will say though that Michele Pfeiffer was convincing as a Russian woman.she had the accent down pat,as far as i could tell.and there were some nice shots of Russian buildings.some of the old buildings are quite magnificent to behold.unfortunately,none of the above is the reason i wanted to watch the movie.i just wanted it end,but i went on and on.and on.anyway,my vote for the Russia House is a 5/10.
God, this movie sucked.Sean Connery walks through the film acting like he believes in the terrible script.
Michelle Pfeiffer as a Russian woman makes this Cold War tale retain its interest, and as for Sean Connery, for once he has an actual rounded character to play, complete with eccentricities, and he does it splendidly.
"The Russia House" is a Cold War espionage story based on the novel by John le Carré.
Since the film was shot in 1990, it depicts the Soviet Union in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and on the verge of collapse.Leading the cast is Sean Connery, who shows an interesting character in "Barley" Blair, a British publisher that is reluctantly dragged into the world of espionage.
The supporting cast is also superb, with Klaus Maria Brandauer as "Dante", James Fox as a warm yet tempered British Intelligence bureaucrat and Roy Scheider as a crass CIA bureaucrat.The story of "The Russia House" develops slowly and thoughtfully.
Imagine the surprise of discovering that a movie based on an unreadable book turns out to be a masterpiece.Director Fred Schepisi filmed Russia House in Moscow and Leningrad in the midst of Glasnot.
The movie begins at a Russian book fair where a Moscow book agent Katia (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) comes to deliver a secret manuscript to "Boozy" Barley Blair (Sean Connery).
Stoppard somehow manages to get the message of Russia House across without stunning us with platitudes about geopolitics and even manages to squeeze in a love story that comes across as mature and moving.This movie is to Sean Connery what Glenn Gary Glenn Ross was to Alec Baldwin.
Roy Scheider, Ken Russel, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Fox, Klaus Maria Brandauer, as well as the regular batch of talented British no-names give this movie the sort of punch that has not been seen since 12 Angry Men and Inherit the Wind.Russia House is not for everyone.
Barley (Sean Connery) owns a small British publishing house but he spends most of his time drinking and talking.
Barley meets Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer), who actually brought the manuscript to the book fair and is without a doubt the most beautiful woman in Russia.
From Sean Connery and James Fox to Roy Scheider and John Mahoney, not forgetting Michelle Pfeiffer as the love interest, there are strong performances and the film rattles along very nicely.
In fact when I first watched the original trailer (which is great by the way) it surprised me wonderfully because having all of those stars whom I love in one romantic spy movie based on one of (John Le Carré)'s novels could have been real fun..