Red Monarch
Red Monarch | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jack Gold |
Written by | Charles Wood |
Produced by | David Puttnam |
Starring | Colin Blakely David Suchet David Kelly Carroll Baker David Threlfall |
Cinematography | Mike Fash |
Distributed by | Film4 Productions |
Release date |
|
Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Red Monarch is a 1983 British television film, starring Colin Blakely as Joseph Stalin. It is directed by Jack Gold and features David Suchet as Lavrentiy Beria and David Threlfall as Stalin's son Vasily.[1]
Plot
[edit]Red Monarch is a black comedy based on The Red Monarch: Scenes from the Life of Stalin, a collection of short critical essays by the Russian dissident and former KGB agent Yuri Krotkov. The film depicts Soviet politics and the interplay between Stalin and his lieutenants, particularly Beria, during the last years of Stalin's rule. The reading of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's "The Heirs of Stalin"[2] in the final scene supposedly warns that the threat of totalitarianism is constantly present.
Cast
[edit]- Colin Blakely as Joseph Stalin
- David Suchet as Lavrentiy Beria
- Carroll Baker as Ellen Brown
- Ian Hogg as Boris Shaposhnikov
- David Threlfall as Vasily Stalin
- Nigel Stock as Vyacheslav Molotov
- Lee Montague as Lee
- David Kelly as Sergo Ordzhonikidze
- Glynn Edwards as Nikolai Vlasik
- Peter Woodthorpe as Georgy Malenkov
- Brian Glover as Nikita Khrushchev
- Oscar Quitak as Lev Mekhlis
- Wensley Pithey as Kliment Voroshilov
- George A. Cooper as Lazar Kaganovich
Box office
[edit]Goldcrest Films invested £553,000 in the film and earned £292,000 making them a loss of £261,000.[3]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "BFI | Film & TV Database | RED MONARCH (1983)". Ftvdb.bfi.org.uk. 16 April 2009. Archived from the original on 16 January 2009. Retrieved 10 February 2014.
- ^ "The heirs of Stalin". Yevgeny Yevtushenko Poetry Archive. Archived from the original on 20 October 2008. Retrieved 18 April 2009.
- ^ Eberts, Jake; Illott, Terry (1990). My indecision is final. Faber and Faber. p. 657.
External links
[edit]- Red Monarch at IMDb
- 1983 films
- 1983 black comedy films
- 1983 television films
- 1983 comedy-drama films
- British black comedy films
- Films directed by Jack Gold
- Films about Joseph Stalin
- Cultural depictions of Lavrentiy Beria
- 1980s English-language films
- 1980s British films
- British comedy-drama television films
- Films based on non-fiction books
- Totalitarianism in fiction
- British television film stubs
- 1980s comedy film stubs