Allegories and Icebergs

Director John Frankenheimer continues to be preoccupied with the dynamics of courage and risk. The Horsemen is a further examination (like Grand Prix and The Gypsy Moths before it) of men testing themselves against awesomely high standards of accomplishment. As in the previous films, Frankenheimer succeeds brilliantly at re-creating the visceral tensions of competition. It is only when he tries to analyze them that he gets into difficulty

Based on a florid Joseph Kessel novel, The Horsemen concerns a master Afghan rider named Uraz (Omar Sharif) who enters the game of buzkashi to assert his manhood and prove himself to his stern and demanding father (Jack Palance). Buzkashi, the national sport of Afghanistan that seems almost medieval in its ferocity, is a considerable test. Contestants ride fiercely against each other, struggling for possession of a headless goat that they must carry twice around the playing field before depositing it at the feet of their king. In the unrestrained fury of the competition Uraz breaks a leg and loses the buzkashi. Partly as penance and partly to regain some measure of self-respect, he sets out with his servant deliberately choosing a nearly impassable mountain route to return home

Fake Dialogue. Until now the film has been a vigorous and accomplished adventure. But during the journey, allegorical trappings descend like a shroud, suffocating much of the movie's energy and momentum. Uraz and the servant meet an outcast woman named Zereh (Leigh Taylor-Young), who promptly turns the men against each other. She even tries to get the servant to murder Uraz so that they may steal his fine white horse. Delirious with pain from his broken leg, Uraz is beleaguered by the elements, his traveling companions, and his own sense of shame. He retaliates by tempting Zereh and taunting the servant, thereby making the journey more difficult and the allegory more dense.

Frankenheimer's technical virtuosity receives ample display, the buzkashi alone is thunderously exciting and imparts a startling sense of participation. But he has tried to do too much. Besides his obsession with courage, he obviously also wanted to say something about greed, honor and duty, but the themes never mesh. Dal ton Trumbo's screenplay and his fake Arabian Nights dialogue do nothing to help. There is much talk of "the coolness of my shop" and characters greet each other with such fulsome salutations as "Peace on you, O master of the stables." Miss Taylor-Young bolts across the Panavision screen flaring her nostrils and looking in her gypsy makeup like a refugee from Golden Earrings. But Jack Palance brings a certain shopworn dignity to his part, and Sharif is better here than in anything else since Lawrence of Arabia.

The flaccid heroics of another adventure film. The Red Tent, invite only listlessness. Based on events surrounding the crash of the Italian airship Italia in 1928, the movie spins a meandering tale of arctic survival and rescue. Peter Finch has a nice go at the part of General Umberto Nobile, the expedition commander, and Sean Connery is engaging as the famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who died searching for Nobile.

There is some stunningly eerie footage of snowscapes and icebergs, but Mikhail Kalatozov directs his dramatic scenes in the overripe style of the worst pseudoepic Russian film making. The Red Tent (so titled for the makeshift shelter in which the survivors took refuge) at no time does justice to the drama of the subject. Finch and his crew are continually threatened by starvation and frostbite, but sheer boredom somehow seems a more likely fate.

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