Red Monarch

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]

Red Monarch
Written by	Charles Wood
Directed by	Jack Gold
Starring	Colin Blakely David Suchet David Kelly Carroll Baker David Threlfall
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
Production
Producer	David Puttnam
Cinematography	Mike Fash
Running time	100 minutes
Original release
Release	16 June 1983 (1983-06-16)

Plot

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" in the final scene supposedly warns that the threat of totalitarianism is constantly present.^[2]

Box office

Goldcrest Films invested £553,000 in the film and earned £292,000 making them a loss of £261,000.^[3]

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
• Oscar Quitak as Lev Mekhlis
• Wensley Pithey as Kliment Voroshilov
• George A. Cooper as Lazar Kaganovich

See also

• The Death of Stalin