In 1928, the first Oscar for acting went to this fellow.

Actually, it went to Rin Tin Tin, but they couldn’t have that, so they gave it to Jannings.

Movies Silently, a site I’ll be referencing often this year, calls this movie an assemblage of Russian Revolution cliches and problematic motivations, and that’s true. Also, I don’t care. It’s big and broad, and I enjoy the silents that use a bigger canvas than a few people in a room.

You can guage your knowledge about the era and the medium by your reaction to this poster:

Wait a minute - you mean they had color back then?

So let's begin. Here's a title card you probably don't expect, based on the poster.

It begins in Hollywood, where a director is paging through actors’ headshots looking for someone to play a General in his Russian epic. (Nice little timeless note: when he pulls out a cigarette, half-a-dozen yes-men produce lighters.) He settles on one face:

"Get me this guy for my movie," he says. More or less. The next day this actor shows up for a madhouse scene at wardrobe:

Quiet Dignity among the confusion. Why, it's just like war.

You have to love the boredom and irritation of the men whose lives are utterly banal and slow, compared to the hellish cattle-call on the other side of the window.

In the makeup room one actor snaps at the old man for moving his head so much: it’s annoying. The old man explains that he had a horrible shock once, and he’s had the jimmies ever since . . .

dissssollllllve

. . . and then the film begins. It goes back to the revolution, when the General was a patriotic Czarist. Not much discussion of the Romanov’s shortcomings. We start wth the beaten-down troops.

We meet two revolutionaries, captured and sent to the General for interrogation.

Who's that girl? Why . . . .

Evelyn Brent - had a rough time in the Talkie era, mostly because her films stunk. (Bonus fun: her 3rd husband, Harry Fox, invented the Foxtrot dance.) Anyway, you know what her appearance means: the General will take a shine to her. But complicating matters is her partner, a man whose insolence must be repaid at once with a flick of his whip:

I chose this shot to give you a chance to identify the actor, because it may come as something of a surprise. A little space to let you imagine who it might be . . .

There's an immense divide - at least in my head - between the sound and silent era, and it's always a bit disconcerting to see the people who played in assuredly modern movies like "The Thin Man" acting in a silent. But there were scant years between the two. Scant.

Long story short, since I’m not here for plot synapses: The General falls in love with the Revolutionary, and she falls for him because he Loves Russia. I guess. Let’s look at the visuals:

You can tell it's not a low-budget show.

Eventually the General is on a train that’s waylaid by Revolutionaries, and the film tells a harrowing story that shows the power of silent film. He’s stripped, humiliated, forced to work shoveling coal while the revolutionaries help themselves to the luxuries of the Czar’s private car. (The Czar is not on board.)

The newly-empowered Workers scream abuse at the General:

What a shot! That's Fritz Feld, I believe - died in 1993; one of his last credits was on the TV show "Sledge Hammer!"

The Beautiful Dangerous Revolutionary helps him escape off the train, and he jumps into the snow. Alas:

It just might be a metaphor for the Revolution.

Back to the present day. The director shows up to meet the old General for the battle scene, and well. Well. Well.

Well. Well.

He humiliates the old man as the old man once humiliated him, then sends him to the stage. (One clever note: the General insists on pinning a medal on his right side, but the wardrobe guy tells him he’s huts - I’ve done dozens of Russian pictures, he says.)

Roll ‘em:

Except that the old General loses it. Get this: he thinks he’s back in the war. Which is an occasion for the sort of thing Hollywood loves: loud broad crazy inspirational orations with flags and tortured expressions and glory and all that. In the Criterion edition, it's set to Mahler's 6th, Fourth movement.

Then he dies.

Sentimental Hollywood nonsense.

I loved it.