<p>It’s reported that Jean-Pierre Melville raved over Huston’s grim, fiercely sharp-witted Cold War–era spy thriller, in which a group of American intelligence agents travel undercover to Moscow under the leadership of a deposed officer (Patrick O’Neal). The atmosphere of The Kremlin Letter, like that of Melville’s Army of Shadows, is hushed, wintry, paranoid, somber, and unforgiving, and the movie’s star-studded cast adapt to the surroundings with great poise. Especially notable are Max von Sydow as a Soviet secret police chief, Bibi Andersson as his ill-treated lover, and Orson Welles as his shadowy boss.