THE LAST COMMAND
Beyond Belonging
A film to “deal with Hollywood and the Russian Revolution” (Josef von Sternberg). A Tsarist general who fled the 1917 revolution is now scraping a living as a Hollywood extra. A successful Russian director hires him for a new production about the Revolution, and the two exiles find themselves united by a shared history … A jewel of the late silent-film era thanks to its superimposition of individual experience over historical reconstruction; von Sternberg hired a large number of Russian emigrés as extras. Emil Jannings, who played the traumatized general, received the first Best Actor Academy Award for his role.
A film to “deal with Hollywood and the Russian Revolution” (Josef von Sternberg). A Tsarist general who fled the 1917 revolution is now scraping a living as a Hollywood extra. A successful Russian director hires him for a new production about the Revolution, and the two exiles find themselves united by a shared history … A jewel of the late silent-film era thanks to its superimposition of individual experience over historical reconstruction; von Sternberg hired a large number of Russian emigrés as extras. Emil Jannings, who played the traumatized general, received the first Best Actor Academy Award for his role.