The Red Tent

The Red Tent (1969)

Красная палатка

Forget everything you've ever heard about heroes. Now there is "The Red Tent."

Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.

Date of release
1969-12-23
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (75)
Runtime
2h 38m
Genres
Adventure, Drama, History
Director
Mikhail Kalatozov

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $10M

The Red Tent is a joint Soviet/Italian 1969 adventure drama film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.

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%. Paul Maslansky was in charge of production for the Italian producer Franco Cristaldi.

Filming started in February 1968 and 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.

Fernando Ghia, who worked on the film, recalled "There was an Italian screenplay, a Russian screenplay and an English screenplay. The Russians wanted to go one way, we wanted to go another and there was a lot of trouble." He claimed, "When you were dealing with the Russians, the actors and technicians were paid by the State and when they were shooting they were paid a bonus, so they shot for ever."

The Russians planned a film that went for four hours but Americans wanted a shorter movie. Half way through the film it was decided to find someone to write new linking scenes for a shorter movie. Robert Bolt was then working in Italy with David Lean on what would become Ryan's Daughter when approached to see if he was interested in working on The Red Tent. Bolt agreed to do it during a 5-week break for a fee of $75,000.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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