The Red Tent

In 1928 the Italian airship Italia comes down over the Arctic. The survivors shelter in a tent they dye red on the ice and call for help by radio. Several countries mount rescues; the aircraft carrying Roald Amundsen, who joins the search, disappears and is never found. The film tells this through an imaginary trial General Nobile convenes in his own apartment years later. The subject is not the crash but a commander judging himself. Nobile summons the dead and the living to his room and each of them questions one of his decisions. What the film is really about is being the first man rescued and carrying that for the rest of his life. The form has two parts: realist survival on the ice and an abstract trial in a room. The polar footage was shot on real ice and the landscape is the film's strongest element. It was made as a Soviet and Italian co-production and produced two different versions with different lengths and different scores. Ennio Morricone wrote the music for the international version and Aleksandr Zatsepin for the Soviet one. Peter Finch plays Nobile, Sean Connery plays Amundsen and Claudia Cardinale the nurse. Mikhail Kalatozov directs. Who it is for: viewers interested in polar exploration and historical disaster. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a straight narrative; the trial frame slows the film down.