The Red Tent (film)

The Red Tent (Красная палатка, translit. Krasnaya palatka; La tenda rossa is a joint Soviet/Italian 1969 adventure drama film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.

The film is based on the story of the 1928 mission to rescue Umberto Nobile and the other survivors of the crash of the airship Italia. It features Sean Connery as Roald Amundsen and Peter Finch as Nobile. The script was adapted by Yuri Nagibin and Mikhail Kalatozov from Nagibin's novel of the same title. Nagibin couldn't complete the script due to a series of conflicts with the producer, who insisted on expanding the role of his paramour Claudia Cardinale, and it was completed by de Concini and Bolt.

Plot
In Rome, Nobile has endured years of scorn for his actions during a disastrous expedition and its aftermath. He imagines a court of inquiry against him, where witnesses and judges are his former crewmen – including Captain Zappi, his navigator and his meteorologist Finn Malmgren. Also arrayed against him are Valeria, Malmgren's lover, Captain Romagna, one of the expedition's would-be rescuers, famed aviator Lundborg, professor Samoilovich, chief of the Soviet rescue mission, his pilot Boris Chukhnovsky, and Roald Amundsen, who died in the search for survivors of Nobile's expedition.

As they try Nobile, the events of the expedition and its failure are depicted. The expedition is successful at first, but ends in disaster. The Italia is weighed down when ice forms on it. Colliding with the ground, the airship's gondola is torn away from its keel and the envelope containing the airship's hydrogen cells; freed of the weight of the gondola, the rest of the ship floats away and out of control, taking some of Nobile's crew with it.

Nobile maintains control of the surviving crew who are now marooned on arctic pack ice with salvaged supplies. They shelter in a tent that they dye red for visibility. They manage to repair the radio, but after receiving no response to their distress calls, three survivors (Zappi, Mariano, and Malmgren) decide to set off across the ice to seek help. The survivors' distress signal is picked up by a Russian radio operator, and the Soviet Union sends the icebreaker Krassin to their rescue. The ship sustains damage en route. Nobile's group is first found by Lundborg, a Swedish pilot who lands on the ice. The aviator insists he can only take Nobile. Nobile agrees, believing that he can best assist the rescue from Kings Bay. These efforts are blocked: Nobile learns that his superiors in Rome have stripped him of command for apparently abandoning his crew, and he is ordered confined to his room and to have no role in the rescue. Desperate, Nobile contacts Prof. Samoilovich to implore him to resume the search for the survivors.

Amundsen joins the rescue effort as well, but disappears, becoming another victim of Nobile's expedition. In Nobile's vision, Amundsen explains that he died after his plane was blown off-course. Flying north, Amundsen's party eventually finds the wreckage of the Italia, spotting what appeared to be survivors. Amundsen orders his pilot, René Guilbaud, to land. Instead, the plane crashes, with Amundsen the sole survivor. On inspecting the wreck, Amundsen realizes that he is doomed, finding nothing to build shelter or fire with, no supplies and no hope of rescue. The men who appeared to be survivors when seen from the air were already long dead.

The group who left on foot encounter difficulties, and are forced to leave Malmgren to die. Back at camp, the ice begins to break apart, and the survivors there escape from the gondola before it sinks. Alone on the ice, Nobile's survivors spot the Krassin on the horizon. As the ship nears for a rescue, they see Zappi and Mariano waving at them from its deck.

Pressed for a vote, Samoilovich defends Nobile's actions, noting that his rescue of the survivors was a direct result of Nobile's escape to King's Bay. Neither can he fault Nobile's apparent lack of heroism because a captain has no right to risk his own safety by individual acts of heroism. The others reach a verdict of guilty, but Amundsen discounts it, finding each of the accusers unfit to judge for various reasons, including indifference to others and emotional sterility, but mostly for their bitterness. The accusers file out of Nobile's apartment, Amundsen being the last. With Amundsen, Nobile reveals his feelings of guilt for leaving the men on the ice. While Nobile admits that his decision to join Lundborg was based on various reasons, some correct while others were wrong, his first thoughts on entering Lundborg's plane were not of rescue, but of a good hot bath. Amundsen helps Nobile find peace by reminding him that his frailty is only a sign of humanity and not guilt.

Production
The film was made with the approval of Nobile. Nobile said of Finch's casting, "I don't know if he looks like me. But if he reads my books and gets into the spirit of the thing, I'm sure he'll give a splendid interpretation."

USSR provided 60% of the budget, Italy (via producer Franco Cristaldi) 40%.

Filming went for 62 weeks. It included location work in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Baltic Sea and the Svalbard Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, and studio work in Moscow and Rome. Shooting was completed on 12 April 1969. Paramount picked up the US distribution rights. Robert Bolt did the final draft of the script.

The international version of the film features original music by Ennio Morricone, with Dino Asciolla as viola soloist and Bruno Nicolai as the conductor.

Critical response
The Red Tent has an approval rating of 88% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 8 reviews, and an average rating of 7.64/10.

Awards
The film was nominated for 1972 Golden Globe Award for Best English-Language Foreign Film.