Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Moving images of The Empress of Russia

Two documents about the youth and early achievements of Czarina Ekaterina Alekseyevna are -for the time being- freely visible in full through the Strange Sidelight:
- The Rise of Catherine the Great,
- The Scarlet Empress.

As it's so often the case, their historical accuracy is debatable; the second, specially, is crammed with 'surreal' images, but the upstairs mounted charge (the 'coup' starts # 1:34:00) is as memorable as spectacular.


Edited: As a matter of old movies featuring Catherine, and on a totally fanciful note (the film was a comedy, and indeed a parody of the 'Frederician' propaganda movies of the time), Baron Münchausen dines and more with the Czarina, before riding a cannonball (shrewdly shot by a jealous Potemkin).
From the 1943 movie Münchhausen visible in full (and Agfacolor) on YouTube.

4 comments:

abdul666 said...

Re The Scarlet Empress, I'm not sure the Chevaliers-Gardes already wore this uniform in 1762, I suspect the Cossacks' long coat to be of 19th C. pattern, I doubt the Inner Guard of the Kremlin still wore an old-fashioned (Streltsy's, here) uniforms in the manner of the Syldavian Guard of the Tower in Ottokar's sceptre and I'm quite sure Catherine was NOT honorary colonel of a regiment of White Hussars; while the sculptures would not be out of place in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete... But what a movie!

Let's say von Sternberg's Russia (Moscowia?) is very 'Imagi - Native'. :)

MurdocK said...

Hey COOL FINDS!

Soldadets said...

Really funny, it all!

MurdocK said...

Downloaded and watched both films ~ very much political statements in The Scarlett Empress ... totally corny and had some great 'characters' in it! I have done a bunch of stills from the film and plan to incorporate them into my blog.

And yes the sculptures are totally BIZARRE! Very imagi-nation!