To me, this movie is perfection.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely the worst movie.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

A reader saw that I am on a frigid historical adventure movie kick and recommended this. I'm glad.For background, 100 to 80 years ago the world was captivated by polar explorers. All sorts of complex and powerful drama unfolded, reflecting both the power of natural forces and the destiny of nations. What got me into this global story was the confabulation of the Scott and Shackleton expeditions to the south pole. The world saw this as the end of empire for the Brits, and so it was. An aristocratic bearing and feeling of manifest destiny are thin tools to take into Antarctica. And the process of encounter and defeat had filmmakers along!But once you get captured by the story, all sorts of other stories emerge. What's a great adventure is to track those through the films made to recount the original events, either as dramatizations or new fiction. One slant of course is films made by the Brits about themselves. Truly intriguing, sort of a "50 Up." Another are films made that focus on the technology. "Dirigible," sort of blew me away, even though I hardly realized that the events depicted here (the Nobile disaster) were only two years earlier. Ignorance of history thwarts the senses.Now this. Here's the most interesting of them all so far as cinema is concerned. First let me say that the version I saw was the 2 hour one released to the world. Somewhere in post-Soviet vaults are two other "director's" cuts (whatever that means in a Soviet film industry), at a half hour the other an hour longer.Mixed in here in a single stew are all sorts of threads and traditions.Its by a great Soviet filmmaker. I've send one of his masterpieces and have yet to see the second. This, well this is a mess, obviously something that ran out of control. And that's one reason to love it: its just the sort of disaster it depicts: overblown, a second rate country trying to score internationally with a bold stroke and then unable to back out. There are wonderful scenes of a Russian ham operator intercepting the SOS and being left ashore on a rising drawbridge as the icebreaker sails without him. This sequence reminds you why Tarkovsky and Eisenstein matter. Its brilliant. Simply brilliant.Its an international project. Though the main story here is of inept Italians, and the outcome was a major kick of that nation down stairs to the basement of relevance where it squats today, it was financed and coproduced by Italians! Italians and Soviets! What a mix. As a result, you can see the tussle in the story and staging, part "Dersu Uzala," part spaghetti western. Its set as a trial of the Italian general by ghosts from the story, and this (obviously inspired by later Bunuel). You have a Scot playing a Norweigian, a Brit an Italian, a Frenchwoman some nationality unknown , a Russian a Swede...The arctic scenery is not as amazingly photographed as I would have expected, and footage from all sorts irrelevant spots are mixed helter skelter. It negates the coherence of the frigid threat.Elsewhere, it attempts to find some complexity in the decisions and "accountability" of failed leaders, something the Italians share with Soviets of the era. This is a disaster, even with Sean Connery at his most renown, playing the one character that really mattered in the drama. That was the Amundsen, the man who was the first to the South Pole, a story of intelligence, planning and resolve over class and national arrogance. He literally changed the face of the earth. He was killed while looking for these inept adventurers.We also have Claudia Cardinale shoehorned in. She's been in some massively great film experience. There are scenes with her in a romantic revelry in the snow that are among the most embarrassing I have ever seen. I mean this. She is lovely and redheaded here, but she should have been excised, though there is an intended great scene where she talks Connery into his doomed search for her already perished lover. Her scenes look like they were shot by an unknown Italian second unit guy.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

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 grows on you. The story line intrigues me so that I have watched the movie time after time. The footage is beautiful. My only complaint is that the movie is not available in DVD to watch in wide-screen.This is not a high action movie. Much line the explorers, the movie is a slow treck. You meet the characters and you learn how play into the story. Most importantly, you learn about the disaster and the quilt and shame associated with it by the ships captain. At the end, you feel resolution, but as he does.Worth watching. Certainly, not one of Sean Connery's most commanding roles.However, the "star" is the air-ship and the beautiful back-ground scenery.

"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.