For the Good of Russia | Rasputin and the Empress (1932)

Here’s the first thing I’ll say about this historical drama: this film is not factually accurate. There was a Russian Royal family known as the Romanovs, there was a confoundingly enigmatic mystic named Rasputin, and everyone did die. That’s roughly where the similarities end. Let’s agree to forgive this film its historical inaccuracies. After all, the movie was released in 1932, a mere 15 years after the October Revolution which destroyed the tsarist monarchy and information trickling out of Russia was sparse at the time. The question of whether the filmmakers even intended historical accuracy is moot because so many facts are skewed in this movie. So let’s leave the history to the historians, and think about this film as a drama. Read More