Die rote Tänzerin von Moskau

1928 was a banner year for movies about the Russian Revolution. To their number you can add THE RED DANCE. It is not, alas, a particularly distinguished example of the genre.

Grand Duke Charles Farrell is an officer serving on the Front. He's frustrated because orders from the Court prevent him from winning battles. He's sent back to Petrograd to find out who's doing this. It takes him about 80 seconds to discover that Rasputin and the Tsarina are being paid by Germany to have Russia lose the war. Before Farrell can tell the Tsar, he's ordered to marry Princess Dorothy Revier and take over the district, including the prison where Dolores Del Rio's father is imprisoned, made to work the treadmill and beaten regularly for the crime of teaching peasants to read.

Miss Del Rio heads to the devastated farm she has been living on, where Ivan Linow starts to rape her. The family who lives on the farm come out to beat him with sticks. When he offers to buy her for a horse, they accept. So she goes on a walk, gets caught in the rain and winds up at a hunting lodge where she makes love with Farrell, who seems to be an ardent democrat. The next day she heads home, but Linow got drunk and has thought better of marrying her. She enters to find her father's corpse and is easily persuaded to assassinate someone, who turns out to be Farrell, who has just married Dorothy. She shoots, misses, he helps her escape and they hope they will be together some day.

Then comes the Revolution and things get even stupider. Linow winds up second-in-command of Soviet Russia.

It was Raoul Walsh's last silent movie, so I suppose neither he nor the folks in charge of screenplays at Fox were concerned about what was essentially a programmer. That would be a major problem with the company until Zanuck took over. The visuals are fine, with a couple of fine montages and the acting is pretty good. But the way the characters are written! Farrell is a noble idiot, which has to be explained in the titles (he had an English mother) and Miss Del Rio gets along with her would-be rapist just fine.

Linow is the only character who makes sense in this movie. He grows somewhat, from drunken rapist to a man with a rough sense of duty and honor. So despite the beautiful visuals, I am just..... well, it's not a good movie. Story, Character and Visuals. A good movie has all three. This has one.