Manthast Absolutely amazing

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

clanciai Evidently inspired by the Kim Philby case, and Dirk Bogarde would have made the perfect Kim Philby - his character and role here immediately makes you think of Philby.In the spy world no one is what he appears to be, everyone is lying as convincingly as possible, and if they are convincing enough they have a chance of getting away with it, but these chances grow inevitably slimmer the longer they stay on as fakers. That is about the sense morale of this film, where everyone acts suspiciously from beginning to end, even Henry Fonda, who thinks he knows everything but is duped nonetheless. Philippe Noiret makes the most honest part, he is under suspicion from the beginning and seems to have accepted from the beginning to be a chronic suspect. Yul Brynner is the most convincing of all and the greatest cheat of all. The ladies are suave enough, especially Virna Lisi representing Italy in this international party, while they have very little to say, except in France - the only tender scene is what makes Philippe Noiret the most sympathetic in the cast.This is not a thriller or any action film but almost callous in its scientific representation of an intricate kettle of spies. It tries to hit a documentary character and almost succeeds, but the story is not very credible. Kim Philby was a true story indeed, and a lot of damage he did, but here the same kind of case is exaggerated into almost absurdity. It gets too technical, and all the international actors can't save its lack of blood and humanity. It's interesting but not more than that, and afterwards you shrug your shoulders and are satisfied with not having to see it again.

lburriss I'm not sure what problem viewers are having with the multiple languages. My DVD player lets me turn on an English-only version. No subtitles needed.I had been looking for this movie since I first saw it in 1973, and finally stumbled across it a couple of years ago. The only things I remembered was that it was a movie about a "mole," the scene where the picture of Mt. Ararat was switched, and the spy exchange at the end.This isn't the most action-packed spy movie around, and certainly isn't in the mold of '60s and '70s James Bond and 007. But in many ways it is the way espionage is really done: slow and meticulous. The pacing sort of reminds me of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

elshikh4 At that era, there were a lot of big production movies with a lot of international stars, something to challenge the mighty power of television back then, and the strange mood of films that hit the genres' formulas in the groins ! Maybe someday I'll give you a list of this kind of movies as it ended up mostly being flops, real proud turkeys, and another huge titanics.Here, it fulfilled all the previous conditions, yet the ambition was just well meaning. Actually after the astonishing (Z - 1969) the term "political thriller" became encouraging. 4 years later (Night Flight from Moscow) tries to make something balanced between the serious satire (the cold war is never over despite any detente), and the commercial sense of suspense, to achieve eventually mediocre work both ways. It could've been genuinely one great espionage movie where all the parties enjoying deceiving each others, but the final result was that tasteless and a little bit embarrassing putting in mind the big names.It's frigid, and that's strange when you look into the history of its director (Henri Verneuil) !, it's silly like a noir movie where all the killings and all the killers are complicatedly successive, it's idiot when you examine the evidences that finally exposed the Russians' real trick.. You've got to think whether the whole Russian intelligence is so dumb? Or the real dumb ones are whom want to convince you with some things as low as this ?! It's, though, a fest of stars, one paranoiac movie, and an early time to launch a twist that surprising ..I think, despite some weakness, it was unpredictable and even more, considering the year of production, as since the 2000s, this became ordinary fashion in movies.It deserves a view; for all the aforementioned and for the wicked sentence that (Yul Brynner) said to his watchers through the camera, plus the way he said it.

Mark Pizzey Finally I was able to see the thriller The Serpent on DVD under a new but poor title NIGHT TRAIN FROM MOSCOW (why this has been changed I don't know). Any film that has Yul Brynner, Henry Fonda & Dirk Bogarde has to be worth watching but this is rarely shown on TV so I was pleased to find the recent Pathfinder DVD release. The film is very much in the trend of your typical spy drama from the sixties (see The Spy who came in from the Cold and The Quiller Memorandum) despite being made in 1973. Brynner is Vlassov a valuable KGB agent who defects on the condition he supplies the CIA with information regarding Double Agents operating in the West. Question: Is he telling the truth or is he himself another carefully placed spy? It's up to CIA head Henry Fonda with the help of British Intelligence Representative Dirk Bogarde to determine this. Phillipe Noiret, Farley Granger, Robert Alda (father of Alan) and Virna Lisi provide the support in an intriguing thriller. Although some of the plot twists are predictable and there's a lengthy absence of the 3 main protagonists in the second act, the pace is just right as opposed to other Bond alternative spy dramas where slow pacing and no action result in boredom.Surprising therefore that The Serpent isn't more widely known as it's a gem of a thriller with a good ending.