Mikhail Kalatozov's<i>the red tent</i>: a case study in international coproduction across the iron curtain

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgement The author thanks Grant Griffin for research assistance. Notes Notes 1 On the Italia's flight and the subsequent rescue mission, there is abundant research and a variety of accessible primary source material. The most comprehensive study is Wilbur Cross, Disaster at the Pole: the tragedy of the airship Italia and the 1928 Nobile expedition to the North Pole (2000 [1960]). Among eyewitness accounts that are most compelling and authoritative, see Davide Giudici, The Tragedy of The Italia: with the rescuers to the red tent (New York, 1929), Umberto Nobile, My Polar Flights: an account of the voyages of the airships Italia and Norge, 1st American edition (New York, 1961). 2 D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 18], Sovetskaia Estoniia (20 August 1970), 4. 3 L. Gurevich, Za pologom krasnoi palatki, Iskusstvo kino (October 1970), 19. 4 Konkurs-70 itogi, Sovetskii ekran (May 1971), i–1. 5 Julian Fox, The Red Tent, Film and Filming, 18 (August 1972), 51. 6 One critic, who panned the film, went so far as to say that The Red Tent ‘is interesting chiefly because it is an Italian–Soviet coproduction.’ See Sigmund Glaubmann, The Red Tent, Films in Review (October 1971), 510. With a budget of $25 million, Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo (Italy–USSR, 1970) was the costliest Soviet international coproduction to date. See http://www.imdbpro.com/. 7 Figures compiled from http://www.imdbpro.com/. 8 Fox, The Red Tent, 52. Mosfilm Studios and the Instituto Cubanodel Arte e Industria Cinematograficos coproduced I Am Cuba, which was cowritten by Cuban Enrique Pineda Barnet and Soviet Evgeny Evtushenko. For a discussion of this film that explores Kalatozov's direction and his close collaboration with cinematographer Sergei Urusevskii, with whom he also collaborated on The Cranes Are Flying, see Dennis West, I Am Cuba, Cineaste (Spring 1996), 52. 9 John McCannon, Red Arctic: polar exploration and the myth of the North, 1932–39 (New York, 1997). 10 German Dmitrievich Kremlev, Mikhail Kalatozov (Moscow, 1964), 69. Among forms of aviation, the airship had a particular hold on Soviet imagination, both popular and state. In May 1926, the airship Norge, piloted by Nobile and under the command of Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian and the first man to reach the South Pole, landed in Leningrad. The Norge received considerable attention, particularly from the Soviet military. On the USSR's efforts to develop an airship industry and Nobile's prominent role in that work, see Clive Foss, Russia's Romance with The Airship, History Today, 47 (December 1997), 10–16. 11 This analogy is made in Iu. Bogomolov, Mikhail Kalatozov: Stranitsy tvorcheskoi biografii (Moscow, 1989), 98. Chapaev was immortalized in Dmitri Furmanov's 1923 novel and then in the 1934 film by the Vassiliev brothers. His bravery and folksy wisdom made him a model for Soviet masculinity, epitomized by his conversion Bolshevism. 12 On Chkalov, including on this Leningrad episode, see McCannon, Red Arctic, 68–73, 76–80. Chkalov appeared on the heels of a string Soviet films to focus on aviation. Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Aerograd (Mosfilm–Ukrainfilm; USSR, 1935) and Iulii Raizman's Letchiki (USSR, 1935) are two of the most notable, early contributions to this genre. Kalatozov's own Muzhestvo also dealt with aviation. On Letchiki, see Bogomolov, Mikhail Kalatozov: Stranitsy, 96–97. 13 On the history of Georgian cinema, see Jean Radvany (ed.) Le Cinema Georgien (Paris, 1988). 14 Bogomolov, Mikhail Kalatozov: Stranitsy, 26, Kremlev, Mikhail Kalatozov, 8–10. 15 Bogomolov, Mikhail Kalatozov: Stranitsy, 94, 99, Kremlev, Mikhail Kalatozov, 80. On Kalatozov, Urusevskii, and the ‘emotional camera,’ see Maxim D. Shrayer, Why are the cranes still flying?, The Russian Review, 56 (July 1997), 425–439. Besides the more famous The Cranes Are Flying and I Am Cuba, Kalatozov and Urusevskii collaborated on two other films: Pervyi eshelon (USSR, 1955) and Neotprovlennoe pismo (USSR, 1959). 16 This quote appears in Kremlev, Mikhail Kalatozov, 81. On the portrayal of Stalin in this film and others from this period, see Kremlev, Mikhail Kalatozov, 68. 17 Chkalov perished in a plane crash during a test flight. Rumors abound that Lavrentii Beriia, head of the notorious internal security police, the NKVD, was behind Chkalov's death, but these accusations remain unsubstantiated. On Chkalov's untimely demise and suspicions surrounding it, see Evgenii Ermakov, Zagadochnaia gibel’ Chkalova, Argumenty i fakty (December 13, 2000). [Available online at: http://www.aif.ru:86/online/aif/1051/17_01?print; accessed September 2, 2003]. On a lighter note, when Kalatozov traveled to the US during the war as the Soviet trade representative to Hollywood he met a young Canadian who had met Chkalov a decade earlier in Portland, Oregon. Unaware that Kalatozov had directed a film about him, the man inquired as to whether anyone in the USSR remembered Chkalov. Refraining from bragging about his own film, Kalatozov simply noted that not only did the Soviet public remember Chkalov, but he had been immortalized with town, villages and schools named after him. Mikhail Kalatozov, Litsa Gollivuda (Moscow, 1949), 7. 18 On the shifting representation of World War II in Soviet popular and official culture, see Nina Tumarkin, The Living and The Dead: the rise and fall of the cult of World War II in Russia (New York, 1995). 19 Fox, The Red Tent, 51. 20 Gurevich, Za pologom, 32. 21 Bogomolov, Mikhail Kalatozov: Stranitsy, 14. 22 On Romanticism, revolution, and Kalatozov, see Ibid., 14–18. On the diversity of Kalatozov's oeuvre, see Kremlev, Mikhail Kalatozov, 11. 23 German Dmitrievich Kremlev, Chelovek pobezhdaet, Sovetskii ekran (July 1970), 12. 24 Gurevich, Za pologom, 22. As Gurevich himself notes, this statement is a play on words, as one of Kalatozov's films was called Muzhestvo [Courage]. 25 Feat in the Arctic, Soviet Film (November 1970), 18. The comprehensive Russian film site Nashe Kino [http://www.nashekino.ru/] and the All Movie Guide [http://www.allmovie.com/] both list Chapaev (USSR, 1934) as the first film by Georgii Vassiliev and Sergei Vassiliev. According to the Internet Movie Database [http://www.imdb.com/], they collaborated on two films prior to Chapaev: Spiashchaia krasavitsa (USSR, 1930) and Lichnoe delo (USSR, 1932). No site mentions Feat in the Arctic or any other film related to the Italia's rescue by the Krasin. However, the All Movie Guide has a reference to a documentary film titled Krasin (USSR, 1929) and notes that no director is listed for the film. Though the Soviet Film source credited Feat in the Arctic to 1928, it is conceivable that these are one and the same, though I think it more likely that they are two different films. This question requires further research. 26 Gurevich, Za pologom, 19, Kremlev, Chelovek pobezhdaet, 10–11. 27 On the rescue of the Cheliushkin's crew, see McCannon, Red Arctic, 61–68. On Nobile's life in the USSR, see Foss, Russia's Romance, 11-13, Kremlev, Chelovek pobezhdaet, 12, Umberto Nobile, My Five Years with Soviet Airships (Akron, OH, 1967). 28 Nobile, My Polar Flights; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 1], Sovetskaia Estoniia (July 25, 1970), 4; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 10], Sovetskaia Estoniia (August 8, 1970), 4; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 11], Sovetskaia estoniia (August 11, 1970), 4. 29 D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 4], Sovetskaia Estoniia (July 30, 1970), 4; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 15], Sovetskaia estoniia (August 15, 1970), 4; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 17], Sovetskaia Estoniia (August 19, 1970), 4. Tatiana Samoilova (b. 1934) appeared in The Cranes Are Flying and Neotpravlennoe pismo. 30 Kalatozov is given writing credits on the Soviet version, but not on the version distributed to Western Europe and North America. I presume this is because he contributed to the parts that were edited out of the shorter, export version. Richard Adams and Ennio De Concini receive sole writing credits on the Western European and North American cut, though Robert Bolt also contributed to this script. The hands of so many writers on the script was no doubt a complicating factor in the film's production. It is certainly a tribute to Kalatozov's directorial skills that the film conveys a sense of cohesion. 31 Gurevich, Za pologom, 32; Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 4], 4; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 13], Sovetskaia estoniia (August 13, 1970), 4; D. Vinitskii, Krasnaia palatka [part 16], Sovetskaia Estoniia (August 16, 1970), 4. 32 Kremlev, Chelovek pobezhdaet, 12. 33 Lev Anninsky, The Red Tent, Soviet Film (November 1970), 20. 34 On the process by which they decided who would head to the coast and when, see Nobile, My Polar Flights, 180–189. 35 Soviet critic L. Gurevich emphasized this systematic vindication of Nobile in his review. See Gurevich, Za pologom, 23–27. For some critics, this consistent support of Nobile's actions undermined the film's dramatic premise. See Roger Greenspun, Arctic Venture, The New York Times (July 30, 1971), 21. 36 Anninsky, The Red Tent, 20. 37 Gurevich, Za pologom, 30.

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