Red Tanks
About Red Tanks
On orders from a supreme ruler, the German general von Buller plans to cross the Soviet border, take a stretch of ground, and destroy the town of Krasnoarmeysk. Soviet tank crews, driver Melnikov and gunner Karasyov among them, break the plan by putting their tanks across a river at a cliff. The German force is pushed into surrender.
Cast & crew
More about Red Tanks
Zinoviy Drapkin and Robert Mayman directed Tankisty at Lenfilm in 1939. A circulating print runs 83 minutes. The story is a German raid that had not yet happened, not a battle already fought.
Themes
Background
It opened in 1939, before the German invasion of 1941, and plays that invasion as a plan that Soviet tanks stop in a day.
Making
Lenfilm staged the raid with tanks crossing a river by way of a cliff, the move that collapses von Buller's timetable.
Preservation
A circulating print runs 83 minutes.
Notes
- Russian title: Tankisty. The English release title is Red Tanks.
- Georgi Gorbunov plays brigade commander Smirnov. Mikhail Volsky plays commissar Tkachenko.
- Vladimir Chobur is tank driver Melnikov. Ivan Kuznetsov is turret gunner Karasyov.
- Ilya Orlov plays General von Buller. Vasiliy Merkurev plays Colonel von Harten, his chief of staff.
- It is black and white, with a mono track, framed at 1.37:1.
Scenes
- Von Buller lays out the seizure of Krasnoarmeysk.
- Soviet tanks drop to the river by a cliff and cross.
- The German column is forced to give up.
