Fragment of an Empire

The Russians are retreating before the German advance, and the dead are piled like cordwood. Desperate men take their boots and flee. Fyodor Nikitin is left for dead, but he has survived, and for ten years he remains where he is, the memoryless village idiot. One day his memory returns and he rides the rods into what he remembers as Petrograd. However, the Revolution has triumphed, and he gradually comes to embrace the new order of things. However, he is still looking for his wife, Lyudmila Semyonova. Thinking him long dead, she has a new husband, Valeri Solovtsov. His job is to lecture the workers on socialism, on the dignity of the individual, and when the two men first meet each other in the factory, he is hectoring the workers, busy eating lunch, on how their wives are deserving of respect. He does not treat Miss Semyonova with respect.

Fridrikh Ermler's late silent picture is full of Academician touches, with bouts of fast montages, and Lasky lighting. Nikitin gives a wild-eyed performance that befits his Rip Van Winkle/Enoch Arden character. Besides the story, it makes a point about cultural lag; we may have a worker's paradise in the factory, but until we are all comrades in the home, the work is not yet done.