THE RED TENT
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1995 Shane R. Burridge
(1971) 121 min
General Umberto Nobile (Peter Finch), an explorer whose airship, the ITALIA, crashed during a 1928 expedition across the Arctic, is visited 40 years later by spirits from his past who have gathered to judge him. These include Hardy Krueger as a mercenary pilot, Sean Connery as Roald Amundsen, and Claudia Cardinale, who looks as if she just dropped by on her way back from the hairdressers (Connery gets top billing but appears in only three scenes). This lengthy pre-credits sequence serves as a framing device for what is essentially a based-on-fact adventure tale that comprises the bulk of the movie. Film concludes with spirits - who are by now recognisable as key characters in the story - delivering their verdict upon Nobile.
Watching this film I can't help think that the producers must have fought the temptation to release two versions - one as it stands, and the other with all the present-day footage removed. This latter cut would certainly concentrate more on the dramatic survival scenes. But the film-makers seem to want to re-open the file on Nobile's story; to exonerate him somehow by presenting perspectives of history as seen then-and-now. Flashback structure seems ill-fitting because events from the past are not told exclusively from Finch's viewpoint, placing viewers in the position of accepting the spirits of the present , who are surely providing him with the full story, as real and not merely conjurations of his guilty subconscious. Why go to all the trouble of providing newsreel archives and authentic locations to establish a realistic atmosphere just to undermine its credibility with a fantasy framework? Fortunately, the arctic landscapes are all too real, and a good anchor back to the world of fact: they are vast, beautiful, and foreboding, where human figures are reduced to black dots on the ice.
Film works best when it shows men grappling against the elements with barely-adequate technology. The scenes with the icebreaker, airplanes, and airship are all convincingly recreated - the initial crash makes for a gripping sequence. Strongest feature of any true-life survival film is that there can be no calculated script decisions over who will live and who will die, so (unless you've read up on your history) there's no sure way to know the outcome. Film's eccentric atmosphere will likewise keep you offguard. Movie buffs may find it quirky to see Krueger and Finch playing a scene together inside airship wreckage in the middle of the Arctic only six years after they were similarly stuck in the middle of the desert in THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX. Question to consider: If Nobile's expedition had been a success, would anybody have bothered to make a film about it?
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