The Red Tent

This is one of the greatest movies i've ever seen, and i wish it was available on DVD. I'm a guy, and i'm not ashamed to say that it's one of the two or three movies i've ever seen that actually made me cry!!! Yea, it's really that good!!! Forget the macho bullshit, this is about real men, and real courage... It's about the courage to survive in the most adverse conditions... And, it's done with that incredible style and cinematic brilliance that only the Italians seem able to achieve (and this from a self-professed anglo-phile...) Oh, yea, and it's actually a true story too...!!! Watch it, if you ever get the chance, and i'm sure you'll agree that this movie deserves to be in the top ten of anybody's list...

Greg, the anglo-Italian movie buff

"The Red Tent", as it was called when released in most of the world, is a fascinating historical epic of Arctic exploration. In the 1920's, Italian General Nobile sought to be the first to fly over the North Pole in a dirigible, of all things! Much of the movie focuses on these efforts; unfortunately, the winds kick up and the air ship is ripped apart. Surviving crewmen end up in various locations on the ice and then procede to battle the elements and polar bears. The great arctic explorer Raoul Amundsen is called in as are the Soviets who pick up radio messages of the disaster; an ice breaker is then dispatched to assist in the rescue. Yes, it is an involved and realistiuc spectacle.

Peter Finch is very good as Nobile, and so is Connery as Amundsen - and it's an historic well-known fact that the first man to reach the South Pole, Amundsen, vanished in his attempt to save Nobile.

Of note is that the story is recounted in flashback much later in a sort of trial of Nobile in his home in Rome, as characters living and dead appear to confront or defend him. Whether or not Nobile was reckless or had bad luck, or just over reached himself, is for the viewer to determine from putting the stories together.

Somewhat long and overinvolved this is still an engrossing account of an epic Arctic disaster and the heroic rescue attempts that followed. If you see it, GRAB it.

An Italian/Russian co-production and featured by a great cast as Peter Finch as Nobile, Sean Connery as Amundsen , Massimo Girotti as Romagna, Claudia Cardinale as Nurse , Mario Adorf as Radio Operator and Hardy Krüger as Lundborg . This interesting flick reminisces about General Nobile and his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the aircraft Italia . An exciting account dealing with bids to rescue the survivors of a dirigible which crashed in a blizzard near the North Pole .

Highly imaginative, fictionalized version of these sad events . The film deal with General Nobile and Amundsen , but this is not a story of his race with Captain Scott to reach the South Pole -similarly to Cook and Peary in North Pole- , but a later episode in his moving career . Interesting and thought-provoking screenplay by prestigious writers : Richard DeLong Adams and Ennio De Concini though the script holds some inconsistencies in the dialogue . Big name cast who has to struggle hard to come to terms the strange happenings as when there appear ghost roles and all of them form a peculiar jury against General Nobile to be judged accused for desertion and cowardice . Very good acting by Peter Finch as Italian General Umberto Nobile torn by personal guilt . In between his last two assignment as James Bond , Connery gave some nice acting for the cinema and this portrait of the Norwegian explorer Amundsen is one of them . Sensitive and moving musical score by the great maestro Ennio Morricone . And colorful pictorial qualities of the cinematography are very strong . The yarn was compellingly directed by Mikhail Kalatozov (The cranes are flying , I Am Cuba) .

This roust man-versus-nature epic picture was well based on historical and biographic accounts , there are the followings : Umberto Nobile was an Italian aviator, aeronautical engineer and Arctic explorer. Nobile was a developer and promoter of semi-rigid airships during the period between the two World Wars . He is primarily remembered for designing and piloting the blimp Norge, which may have been the first aircraft to reach the North Pole, and which was indisputably the first to fly across the polar ice cap from Europe to America. Nobile also designed and flew the Italia, a second polar airship; this second expedition ended in a deadly crash and provoked an international rescue effort . The Italia, nearly identical to the Norge, was slowly completed and equipped for Polar flight during 1927–28. Part of the difficulty was in raising private funding to cover the costs of the expedition, which finally was financed by the city of Milan; the Italian government limited its direct participation to providing the airship and sending the aging steamer Città di Milano as a support vessel to Svalbard, under the command of Giuseppe Romagna . On 23 May 1928, after an outstanding 69-hour-long flight to the Siberian group of Arctic islands, the Italia commenced its flight to the North Pole with Nobile as both pilot and expedition leader. On 24 May, the ship reached the Pole and had already turned back toward Svalbard when it ran into a storm. On 25 May, the Italia crashed onto the pack ice less than 30 kilometres north of Nordaustlandet . Of the 16 men in the crew, ten were thrown onto the ice as the gondola was smashed; the remaining six crewmen were trapped in the buoyant superstructure as it ascended skyward due to loss of the gondola; the fate of the six men was never resolved. One of the ten men on the ice, Pomella, died from the impact; Nobile suffered a broken arm, broken leg, broken rib and head injury; Cecioni suffered two badly broken legs; Malmgren suffered a severe shoulder injury and suspected injury to a kidney; and Zappi had several broken ribs.The crew managed to salvage several items from the crashed airship gondola, including a radio transceiver, a tent which they later painted red for maximum visibility, and, critically, boxes of food and survival equipment which quick-witted engineer Ettore Arduino had managed to throw onto the ice before he and his five companions were carried off to their deaths by the wrecked but still airborne airship envelope and keel. As the days passed, the drifting sea ice took the survivors towards Foyn and Broch islands.A few days after the crash the Swedish meteorologist Finn Malmgren and Nobile's second and third in command Mariano and Zappi decided to leave the immobile group and march towards land. Malmgren, who was injured, weakened and reportedly still depressed over his meteorological advice that he felt contributed to the crash, asked his two Italian companions to continue without him. These two were picked up several weeks later by the Soviet icebreaker "Krasin". However, there were persistent rumors that Malmgren was killed and cannibalized .

This Italian-Russian endeavor is a lost treasure and one of the great historical dramas. The movie is really a dream of General Nobile, a survivor and commanding officer of the Italia, a dirigible that met with disaster in a grand Artic exploration during the Mussolini era. It is about the psychology of guilt, accountability, and leadership. Beyond the human psychological profile of the film, it captures the harsh, expansive grandeur of nature better than almost any movie I've seen. The cinematography of the Artic is unlikely to be ever met again with the computer-generated film of today. The Russian ice-breaker ship which rescues the Italian crew survivors requires no special effects and remains a challenge for today's movie producers to emulate. The iceberg film sequences were spectacular. Sean Connery, Claudia Cardinale, Peter Finch and the rest of the cast give very fine acting performances. Ennio Morricone composes one of his greatest scores. As great as a film composer he is, he still is not remembered for one of his most haunting compositions in this film. There is an equally beautiful soundtrack in the Russian version by composer Aleksandr Zatsepin. It is a shame this film was not recognized perhaps in part due to its Soviet influence in a Hollywood-dominated market. It is a bit rough around the edges (meaning editing and directing could be smoother) but in terms of great film-making, it rarely gets better. When you watch it a couple times, you begin to appreciate the raw beauty and human drama of this film.

The Red Tent chronicles the series of polar disasters beginning with the crash of the dirigible piloted by Italian General Umberto Nobile trying to make a historic air crossing of the North Pole. Nobile is played by Peter Finch in this epic film that unfortunately due to a bad publicity campaign and an indifference to the subject by western audiences made this historic Russian-Italian jointly produced film a financial disaster.

That's a pity because photographically it's one of the finest things ever put on celluloid stock. There are some absolutely breathtaking shots of the frozen tundra and the performances of the actors battling the elements are first rate. Maybe a straight narrative might have been better instead of having the aged Nobile confronting some angry spirits of the past. Nobile was still alive when this film came out, he would die in 1978 still a figure of controversy. The dream with the angry spirits is a device frankly ripped off from George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan.

Maybe the film could be best compared to William Wellman's Island in the Sky that starred John Wayne. The fictional characters there are mostly rescued and held together by Duke's leadership. Of course some thirty years advance in aviation and no political interference helped Wayne's men. And Island in the Sky is a work of fiction.

Maybe it wouldn't be so if men of science could simply be men of science without answering to competing ideologies. Nobile and his men got caught up in the politics of the time. Politics claimed a lot of their lives and the lives of Roald Amundsen and party who vanished in a rescue attempt.

Nobile also made some bad choices and had some bad choices forced on him by Mussolini's fascist government. He was also a man out of his element, he was great aviation pioneer, but not a polar explorer. He paid with his reputation, some of his party paid with their lives.

Sean Connery has a small role as Roald Amundsen and I wish we had more of him here. Finch has a very effective scene with Claudia Cardinale the widow of one of his men where she takes him to task. Hardy Kruger does a fine job as the aviator presenting Finch with a very disagreeable choice.

I'd recommend seeing it, but only on the big screen. Or definitely in a letter box version. The formatted VHS I have definitely hampers the spectacle.