''Red Monarch'' is a 1983 British
television film
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a Terrestr ...
, starring
Colin Blakely as
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
. It is directed by
Jack Gold and features
David Suchet as
Lavrentiy Beria and
David Threlfall as Stalin's son
Vasily.
Plot
''Red Monarch'' is a
black comedy
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...
based on ''The Red Monarch: Scenes from the Life of Stalin'', a collection of short critical essays by the Russian
dissident
A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...
and former
KGB
The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
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" in the final scene supposedly warns that the threat of
totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public s ...
is constantly present.
Box office
Goldcrest Films invested £553,000 in the film and earned £292,000 making them a loss of £261,000.
Cast
*
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
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
*
Oscar Quitak as
Lev Mekhlis
*
Wensley Pithey as
Kliment Voroshilov
*
George A. Cooper as
Lazar Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (; – 25 July 1991) was a Soviet politician and one of Joseph Stalin's closest associates.
Born to a Jewish family in Ukraine, Kaganovich worked as a shoemaker and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ...
See also
* ''
The Death of Stalin''
References
External links
*
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
English-language black comedy films
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