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"To explain Revolution is no task of ours," declare the opening credits, to squeeze it for melodramatic juice is another matter. Repin's painting sets the image, among the burlaks is the Bolshie hunk (William Boyd) whose dolorous song seems to embody "the very soul of Russia." On the aristocratic side is the Princess (Elinor Fair) betrothed to the Czar's commander (Victor Varconi), gypsy fortune-teller (Julia Faye) and ponderous blacksmith (Theodore Kosloff) comprise the opposite couple, ornate sash contrasts with whipped chest. The change in regime turns out to be a question of who shines whose boots, "useless, perfumed hands" give way to burly ones wielding hammers. "Let us call at this castle, comrades, with a bouquet of guns." Like Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, Cecil B. DeMille's Red and White canvas is a reactionary's surprising reconsideration of insurrection. Rebel and noblewoman in a locked room with ticking clock and loaded pistol, the target drawn with lipstick on the pale bosom is answered by a swooning kiss. Wine into blood is a recurring theme, rotating flags at the inn make for tenuous refuge for the fugitive twosome, cf. Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. (Captured in plebeian garb, the heroine is forced into an impromptu Dance of the Seven Veils reflected on the leering faces of imperial officers.) Grand ball at the palace, "we shall add to the festivities the execution of this Red leader," curtailed as a cannon blows a hole in the walls of the Old Order. A hopeful future means harnessing the bejeweled elites, the extensive lineage includes Conway's A Tale of Two Cities and Lean's Doctor Zhivago. (Eisenstein's October is, among other things, a riposte.) With Robert Edeson, Arthur Rankin, Gino Corrado, and Charles Clary. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |