I watched this last night on TCM. My cynical 15-year-old son became curious when he saw the odd thing that I was watching--a silent film starring a very scruffy and awkward Lon Cheney.Surprisingly enough, my son actually forwent his addictive computer games and stayed for the entire movie, all the while asking many questions about the Russian Revolution.
Throughout, the movie is politically ambiguous--who are the bad guys: the aristocracy or the revolutionaries? The fascinating film seems to reveal how the events and passions of the Russian Revolution still mystified non-Russian filmmakers well after the initial upheaval. In the end, the movie still aims to reconcile two views that history has since shown as irreconcilable, and the survivors of the movie most likely were not the survivors of history. The film is compelling, raising questions about outsiders' values affecting their views of the revolution, and also making clear how much of the internal effects of the revolution were still hidden from outsiders at the time of the movie. Simply riveting study!
Throughout, the movie is politically ambiguous--who are the bad guys: the aristocracy or the revolutionaries? The fascinating film seems to reveal how the events and passions of the Russian Revolution still mystified non-Russian filmmakers well after the initial upheaval. In the end, the movie still aims to reconcile two views that history has since shown as irreconcilable, and the survivors of the movie most likely were not the survivors of history. The film is compelling, raising questions about outsiders' values affecting their views of the revolution, and also making clear how much of the internal effects of the revolution were still hidden from outsiders at the time of the movie. Simply riveting study!