Krylya kholopa

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Originally titled Wings of a Serf in the USSR, this Russian historical pageant (original title: Krylya Kholopa) manages to pack a lot of detail — and a great deal of nonsense — into its scant 60 minutes. Throwing accuracy to the four winds, the screenplay deals with a fabricated romantic triangle involving 16th-century Czar Ivan (Leonid Leonidov), his wife the Czarina (Sofya Askarova) and his wife’s paramour Nikita (Ivan Klyukvin). The celebrated brutality of Ivan is crystallized in a single moment wherein the czar throws a bowl of scalding soup into the face of his court jester. American critics who’d grown weary of the praise lavished on such Soviet classics as Potemkin seemed to delight in pointing out the deficiencies of Czar Ivan, the Terrible, as if to say “See? They aren’t all classics!” Nonetheless, the film did record business when it opened at New York’s Cameo Theater in March of 1928, two years after its original release. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Yego prevoskhoditelstvo

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Also known as His Excellency, Seeds of Freedom was another of director Grigori Roshal’s explorations of the plight of the Jewish populace in pre-revolutionary Russia. The story pits an aggressively anti-Semitic provincial governor (L.M. Leonidoff) against a tenacious rabbi. Because the latter refuses to resort to violence, the governor is allowed to perpetrate any number of atrocities with impunity. Finally, the rabbi’s non-aggression policies are overruled by a faction of rebellious Jewish socialists, who ultimately bring about the despotic governor’s demise. A romantic subplot is introduced when the rabbi’s free-spirited daughter defiantly falls in love with one of the socialist leaders.

Leonid Leonidov – MRQE

Krylya kholopa

Yego prevoskhoditelstvo