Kirigin William Hootkins as Chuck Malarek Shane Rimmer as Ambassador Larry Smith Marc Sinden as Charles Maryam d'Abo as French Girlfriend Daniel Benzali as Dr. Asher Production The opening ballet sequence, Le Jeune Homme et La Mort, originally choreographed by Roland Petit in 1946 and performed anew by Baryshnikov and Florence Faure, was filmed at the Bristol Hippodrome. The gentleman paging the curtain for Baryshnikov is John Randall, the theatre's technical director at the time. In 1985, many western Cold War movies supposedly set in Russia would use locations in the Finnish capital Helsinki with an architectural style resembling Leningrad. For White Nights, a team of travelogue filmmakers from Finland, who previously had done work in the Soviet Union, were hired to film a number of locations in Leningrad, such as the Kirov Theatre and the Lenin monument, as well as a Chaika state-limousine. These scenes were then inserted into the movie, some being in-car scenes. Hackford was disappointed with critics who wrote negative reviews based on their belief that Helsinki had been used. The film was also shot in Finland (including the island of Reposaari) and Lisbon, Portugal, as well as other parts of the United Kingdom including Elstree Studios and RAF Machrihanish in Scotland. Filmmakers normally use models to film the crash-landing of an aircraft as expensive as a Boeing 747. For the filming of the crash sequence of a British Orient 747 at the beginning of White Nights, two different full-sized aircraft were used. For shots representing the British Orient 747 while still aloft, a rebadged Aer Lingus Boeing 747 performed a touch-and-go landing at RAF Machrihanish. For shots representing the British Orient 747 after touchdown, the production team purchased an older Boeing 707 from South America. The 707 was converted with the famous 747 hump, a painted cockpit and a small vision slit on the original cockpit, so the stunt pilots could perform the live action crash-landing. Due to the size differences, forced perspective was used to give the impression of a larger aircraft and short actors used in a brief sequence where a vehicle is almost hit. The 707 aircraft in question had originally been built for South African Airways (SAA) in July 1960 and registered as ZS-CKC (serial number 17928), and was retired from SAA in 1977. It was next operated by Panama World Airways as N90651, and commercially retired by same in 1981.