The Russia House

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Movie
German title The Russia House
Original title The Russia House
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1990
length 122 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Fred Schepisi
script Tom Stoppard
production Paul Maslansky
Fred Schepisi
music Jerry Goldsmith
camera Ian Baker
cut Beth Jochem Besterveld
Peter Honess
occupation
synchronization

The Russia House ( The Russia House ) is an American movie from the year 1990 with Sean Connery , Michelle Pfeiffer , Klaus Maria Brandauer , Roy Scheider and James Fox . The Director led Fred Schepisi .

The literary template for the film was the novel of the same name by John le Carré . The title of the film refers to the Secret Intelligence Service's internal nickname Russia House for the Soviet Union department .

action

The London publisher Bartholomew Scott Blair is invited to a Moscow book fair at a dacha in Peredelkino , where artists, writers and dissidents meet. Blair, who has drunk a lot, is in great form, improvising on a comb of jazz music and giving big speeches in which he works for peace, disarmament and human rights. Among the guests is a silent listener who watches Blair carefully. The dacha is located in a wooded area that also houses Boris Pasternak's tomb , and where Blair goes for a walk. The stranger, known as Dante , follows him, draws him into conversation and asks him to smuggle a book with explosive information that he has written into the West and publish it. Blair hesitates at first, but finally gives him a handshake.

The next time Blair is expected at the Moscow fair, but does not show up there, the Russian publishing clerk Katya Orlova comes to his stand. She wants to hand him an important manuscript in person. But Blair cannot be found and instead she gives the manuscript to a British colleague of Blair. Since Blair is still nowhere to be found, he gives the script to the British embassy, ​​and so it ends up in the hands of MI6 .

The manuscript deals with the state of Russian nuclear weapons. Ned from the British secret service is taking on the matter and will soon have to bring in the Americans, who have more information through the CIA than the British. The MI6 finally locates Blair in his Lisbon apartment. Ned and Russell of the CIA use gentle pressure to persuade him to extract more information from Dante. Ned prepares Blair for his spy work in Moscow. In Moscow, Blair contacts Katya, tries to find out who Dante really is, what functions he has, how she met him, and falls in love with the beautiful Russian. All conversations with Katya are recorded on a tape that he wears on his body and transmitted to Langley via a Moscow intermediate station and satellite . Analysis of the recorded conversation shows that Dante is the Russian mathematician and engineer Saveliev, the “right hand of God” as a CIA man calls him, and thus an excellent source . The analysis of the texts shows that the Russian armaments are in a desolate state, so the Americans could stop their arms race. This in turn puts Russell in a dilemma, since the CIA and thus his job are financed by the arms industry, which makes a billion-dollar business with it and has no interest in disarmament.

Blair, who has become more and more familiar with Katya and her children, makes her a love confession, which she accepts with reluctance. She's not sure if she can trust him. He then informs her that he is spying for MI6, but that Dante is aware of it. In the following telephone conversation from a public telephone, which Katya's contact with Dante used to go, Dante informs her via an agreed code word that he has been exposed. You and Blair are now under surveillance by the KGB . When the CIA provided him with a so-called “shopping list” for the conversation with Dante, he decided to use the list to trade with the KGB and to exchange it for Katya, her family and his employees living in Russia to leave the country To use vests. In a questioning by the KGB, in which the conditions for handing over the “shopping list” are being negotiated, he learns that Dante suddenly died of hepatitis . Nevertheless, he trusts that the Russians will keep their promise. To protect himself against his own secret service, he explained his exact procedure and his motives in a letter to Ned, who has since become a friend. Although he has “betrayed his country”, the matter is not only without consequences for him: nothing changes in politics, the “ balance of horror ” is preserved. After his return to the West, Blair waits in his Lisbon apartment for the ship with which Katya and her family will finally arrive.

production

Hotel Ukraina, 2009

The film was shot at Pinewood Studios in London . Other locations were Lisbon, London, Vancouver and Bowen Island in Canada, Saint Petersburg , the Trinity Cathedral of the Sergius Monastery in Sergiev Posad and various prominent buildings in Moscow, among others. a. the Red Square , the Moscow metro, the department store Gum , the Hotel Ukraina and other Moscow hotels. The Russian government provided a special train for the Moscow unit of around 150 employees. The filming in Moscow itself was generously supported by the Moscow police. This was only the first time, after Red Heat with Arnold Schwarzenegger (1988), that Soviet authorities gave a western film crew permission to shoot. 

With Sean Connery as the Oscar winner and four other Oscar-nominated colleagues (Michelle Pfeiffer, Roy Scheider, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Ken Russell), the film had a top-class cast. According to the contract, Connery had a say in the casting. He had worked with Brandauer in his last James Bond film, Never Never Say It .

The cameraman was Ian Baker again , for Schepisi and Baker it was the sixth film together since 1984.

music

For the film composer Jerry Goldsmith it was the first collaboration with Frank Shapisi.

The lyrical-elegiac music, played by a symphony orchestra with a rich set of strings and orchestrated with the participation of Arthur Morton, is formative for the character and mood of the film, with the dominant melody, the so-called "Katya theme", being played through in countless variations. Goldsmith had composed this melody for Oliver Stones Wall Street (1987) and then offered it in electronic form for Alien Nation (1988), both times he was rejected. A motif consisting of four notes played on the cello and accompanied by strings or a synthesizer serves as a musical element of tension .

To characterize the two male protagonists, Goldsmith uses music from different genres as a leitmotif, so to speak . If Dante is mentioned or if he appears on the scene, then the duduk , an Armenian woodwind instrument, is used. It is played by Yegueshe Tsurvan.

Baley's music is jazz. He either plays live with the band jazz standards like What Is This Thing Called Love? by Cole Porter and The Sheik Of Araby by Ted Snyder or on the Kamm Ain't Misbehavin ' by Fats Waller , rhythmically accompanied by the audience with everything on the table that can be used as a percussion instrument, from samovar lids to vodka bottles. His actions, his silent playing are occasionally prepared or accompanied by bass and piano. The soprano saxophone is played by Branford Marsalis , who at the end of the film, together with John Patitucci on bass and Michal Lang on piano, plays a seven-minute improvisation over passages of the film music, which extends from the couple's reunion scene to the end of the credits.

synchronization

role actor Voice actor
Bartholomew 'Barley' Scott Blair Sean Connery Gert Günther Hoffmann
Katya Orlova Michelle Pfeiffer Katja Nottke
Russell Roy Scheider Hellmut Lange
Alik Zapadny Daniel Wozniak Jürgen Heinrich
Arkady Alexei Jawdokimov Klaus Munster
bob Mac McDonald Wolfgang Völz
Brady John Mahoney Edgar Ott
Clive Michael Kitchen Frank-Otto Schenk
Colonel Quinn JT Walsh Bodo Wolf
Dante Klaus Maria Brandauer Klaus Maria Brandauer
Ned James Fox Jürgen Thormann
Henziger Colin Stinton Ingolf Gorges
Larry Christopher Lawford Harry Kühn
Merrydew Ian McNeice Jörg Döring
Merv Blu Mankuma Rainer Doering
Niki Landau Nicholas Woodeson Claus Jurichs
Wicklow David Threlfall Bernd Vollbrecht
Walter Ken Russell Gerd Duwner

publication

The film was released a year after the book came out. The script was developed from the unprinted manuscript before publication.

The international premiere took place in the USA on December 25, 1990, the German premiere followed on March 14, 1991. In 2002 Twentieth Century Fox produced a DVD with subtitles in eight languages. In 2018 Arthaus released a DVD and Blu-ray supplemented with bonus material.An audio CD with the film music was released in 1992 by Geffen Records .

Reviews

On Rotten Tomatoes , the film scored 76% based on 17 reviews.

"[...] not a spy cracker à la 'James Bond', but a calmly told - nonetheless exciting - and rather emotional plea for humanity."

- Prism-online

“Instead of action, stunts and pyrotechnics, there are intelligent dialogues and coherent characters. The Australian director Fred Schepisi relies entirely on the quality of the script [...] as well as the strength of his actors and thus takes a step that is rare in today's US cinema: he largely leaves it to the viewer to draw conclusions from the events to pull. "

- epd film issue 3/1991

“[...] the actors play their roles brilliantly. [...] This is one of the best films of the year. "

- Hal Hinson : The Washington Post

Awards

Michelle Pfeiffer was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her role . Fred Schepisi was nominated for the Prize of the Festival Internacional de Cinema do Porto .

The German Film and Media Evaluation FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the title valuable.

The film also took part in the 1991 Berlinale competition, but received nothing when it came to the awards.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Das Russland-Haus . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2012 (PDF; test number: 65 406 V).
  2. ↑ Fred Schepisi in: The Russia House. Arthaus DVD 2018. Bonus material.
  3. ^ Sönke Krüger: TV feature film in: Dirk Manthey, Jörg Altendorf, Willy Loderhose (eds.): The large film lexicon. All top films from A-Z . Second edition, revised and expanded new edition. tape IV . Verlagsgruppe Milchstraße, Hamburg 1995, ISBN 3-89324-126-4 , p. 2342 .
  4. ↑ a b Markus Wippel: The Russia House by Jerry Goldsmith Soundtrack Board, accessed on July 8, 2019
  5. ↑ IMDb
  6. ↑ Jerry Goldsmith: The Russia House-Love Theme youtube, accessed July 8, 2019
  7. ↑ a b Dirk Windenden: The Russia House, sound analysis , accessed on July 8, 2019
  8. ↑ The Russia House Filmtracks, editorial reviews, accessed July 8, 2019
  9. ^ The Russland-Haus in the German synchronous file
  10. ↑ [1] IMDB Trivia
  11. ↑ Rotten Tomatoes
  12. ↑ The Russia House. In: Prisma-online . Retrieved March 18, 2008 .
  13. ↑ Hal Hinson: 'The Russia House' (R). In: The Washington Post . December 21, 1990, accessed on March 18, 2008 (English): “[…] the actors play their pieces brilliantly. [...] It's one of the year's best films "