LA TENDA ROSSA [THE RED TENT] (1970)
The Red Tent is a Russian/Italian drama film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, adapted from the novel by Yuri Nagibin. The film stars Sean Connery as Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, and tells the true story of how he led an expedition to rescue his great rival Umberto Nobile (Peter Finch), one of the survivors of an airship crash off the coast of Svalbard in 1928, but lost his life in the process. The film co-starred Claudia Cardinale and Hardy Krüger and, interestingly, Ennio Morricone was not the original composer on the film; Russian musician Aleksandr Zatsepin originally wrote the score for the film’s domestic release in the Soviet Union in 1969, but his music was replaced with a new score by Morricone for the film’s international release the following year.
Morricone’s main theme for The Red Tent is often cited by aficionados as one of the most beautiful themes of his entire career, and it’s not hard to see why. This “Tema d’Amore” is a gorgeous, haunting, searching lament for a bank of strings that gradually grows to enormous proportions of effortless beauty, especially when the heavenly sound of soprano soloist Edda dell’Orso enters the cue after around 80 seconds. This combination of graceful religioso strings and angelic vocals is a classic Morricone sound that has been heard in many scores over the years, but The Red Tent is truly one of the best.
The rest of the score, as one might imagine, pales in comparison to this staggering opening, but there are still numerous highlights to be found. A more earnest, forthright melody emerges in the second cue “La Tenda Rossa,” but this is interrupted with some stark, dramatic strings and woodwinds that speak to the danger of Amundsen’s quest to find Nobile. The subsequent “Morte al Polo” is a surging, similarly dramatic action cue for interlocking rhythmic string ideas, interspersed with lovely statements of the main theme that enhance the sense of tragedy and loss, as well as some effective ghostly choral ideas. “Un Amore Come la Neve” revisits the main theme with more emphasis on the brass, “Messagio da Roma” is a clever suspense cue that features the piano hammering out morse code, and the “Finale” is a solemn coda that builds to an appropriately elegant and emotional climax.
The soundtrack ends with a massive 22-minute piece entitled “Altri, Dopo di Noi” – “Others, Who Will Follow Us” – an extended piece of dense and challenging dissonance which occasionally emerges into frenetic trombone-heavy action music that underscores some the intense rescue sequences (listen to that explosion of brass at the 10:00 mark), and more allusions to morse code, before it eventually drifts away into icy nothingness. I would love for this suite – which is actually a massive edit of several short cues together – to be split out into more digestible chunks, because many individual moments are superb, but they tend to be buried in the middle of this dissonant behemoth that is challenging to get through.
As one would expect given its popularity, the score for The Red Tent has been released many times over the years. My preferred version is the one released by Italian label Legend Records in 1994, although the 2010 expanded release from the same label is also recommended.
Track Listing: 1. Tema d’Amore (3:31), 2. La Tenda Rossa (2:30), 3. Morte al Polo (4:11), 4. Un Amore Come la Neve (2:12), 5. Messagio da Roma (1:40), 6. Sono Vivi (1:39), 7. Addio (2:51), 8. Altri, Dopo di Noi (22:20). Legend CD15, 40 minutes 54 seconds.
