midge56 The boy Alexei ruins the movie. His part is poorly written. Every 5 minutes, he is screaming about something so everyone comes running & indulges him. It repeatedly stops the flow of the film. He's a spoiled, self indulgent brat.On top of that, he deliberately does everything he can come up with to defy the rules of caution he must follow to prevent bleeding injury due to hemophilia. He goes out of his way to do dangerous things which will cause bleeding injury & does not care what problems it causes for everyone else. Then add the constant screaming every 5 minutes and you will be so sick of this kid after 30 minutes. It's a wonder he did not rupture his larynx. This was clearly poor scriptwriting & poor direction. Totally unnecessary.Then we have the Tsarina wife of Nicholas; Alix or Alexandra who is constantly feeling sorry for herself & always pampering the screaming, self indulgent son. She is so self consumed & lost in space she refuses to perform her duty & sign the paperwork to feed the Russian people. It was her pressuring which made her husband abandon his duties & run off to war leaving her in charge. But she is paralyzed with self pity, her pampered son's antics and the vile influence of Rasputin. This is actual history but it is still as irritating as is the poor script mishandling of her son.Finally, the weak, indecisive Tsar Nicholas who is so in love with his wife, he can't say no to her despite her terrible advice. He is a mentally immature little boy in a man's body. He does not feed his people or provide schools, medical, homes or shelter. He thinks they need only him & indulges in the peoples adoration and lives in autocratic opulence. They want gov't control. Then his troops started killing the strikers & marchers.The tsar sends his peasants out to war without ammunition, modern weapons, food, clothes, shelter, education or pay to die in senseless wars by the millions which he was cautioned not to start & no way to win. The Tsar can't do his job & his wife constantly whines with self pity & neither can be reasoned with.The peoples Duma gov't takes over but they listen to the US who offers $300 million to stay in WWI & continue to die. Lenin offers the peasants peace & power instead so the rabble become violent Bolsheviks who take over the new gov't & kill the Tsars entire family who didn't have the sense to flee Russia. They had a yacht & several properties outside of Russia as options. Killing the children was going overboard.The British were willing to give them sanctuary as they had done with many other leaders but George V, the grandfather of QE2 & cousin to the tsar & his wife, personally withdrew the parliaments offer to allow his cousins Nicholas & Alix and their children sanctuary in Britain. His cowardice got the Romanov's killed. His journals reflect his cold blooded attitude about their deaths & show no remorse for what he had done.You may have to watch it more than once because the slow pace allows your mind to wander.

kgwrote-854-104240 Tom Baker makes a great Rasputin, however the lead actors bored me terribly, so I suppose it doesn't matter that the script was often filled with hokey banal dialogue. The big sin with the film as Hollywood propaganda is that it put all the blame for Russia's problems on the Czar and ignored the treachery and vicious Old Testament-inspired violent sadism of the Bolsheviks, who were not thinking about the good of the Russian people at all, but how they could suck the country dry and use it to further other ambitions (like the globalism which has now led to the present immigration crisis). According to Mark Twain and others, Russia's problems with "usury folk" date back to the 1870s, with assassinations and bad dealings, it had little or nothing to do with Christian intolerance as we have heard.If Hollywood and the Western media was to be believed, Lenin and his friends wanted to help workers, yet we know that perhaps millions of ethnic Russians were killed after the Bolsheviks took control (this was later blamed on Stalin even though he was not in power). The deaths tied to the Czar pale by comparison. Who was the real tyrant? We also learn that George Patton felt so strongly that Communists were the greatest threat, he concluded the US should have sided with Hitler against them! But he died from an "accident" before he could return stateside.The movie serves as an example of how Hollywood sought to portray history in a way that slants it with less than noble aims.Seems like the Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil was hinting at it too:I stuck around St. Petersburg When I saw it was a time for a change Killed the Tsar and his ministers Anastasia screamed in vain

GusF One of the last films in the great tradition of the historical epics which dominated the 1950s and 1960s, it begins with the birth of Tsarevich Alexei, the apple of his parents' eye, on August 12, 1904 and ends with the murders of the entire Romanov family on July 17, 1918. While the film suffers from a few pacing problems, it is nevertheless a hugely entertaining and very well written film with often marvellous dialogue. Franklin J. Schaffner of "Planet of the Apes" (my sixth favourite film of all time) and "Patton" fame does a great job as the director.As the title characters, Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman are excellent, delivering subtle, understated performances. They have great chemistry. Throughout the film, you never doubt that they love each other. Nicholas II is depicted as a weak-willed, indecisive and not terribly bright man who loves his family but whose personality makes him utterly unsuited to his position. He fails to listen to the good advice of his prime ministers, most notably Count Witte, and often takes unwise courses of action at the behest of his strong willed wife. It is not until far too late, after he has already lost his throne, that he engages in some form of self-reflection and realises all of the mistakes that he made. My sympathy for him grew as the film progressed and he became an increasingly tragic figure. He may have been the Tsar but he always seemed to be someone's pawn rather than his own man. I think that, in the film at least, he became a better man after being forced to abdicate. Alexandra - who was hated because she was German - seems to be more intelligent than her husband, who is under her thumb and tells her as much at one point. However, her judgement is as bad as his or possibly even worse as she falls under the influence of Rasputin. She is blinded to his crimes and misdemeanours by her love for Alexei and the mystic's apparent ability to control his haemophilia. She is a less sympathetic character than Nicholas, in part because she says expressly at one point that, on reflection, she could think of anything that she had done wrong in the years leading up to 1917. I've no idea if this statement has any historical basis whatsoever but it worked well in the context of the film as she appears to be as blind to her own faults as she was to those of Rasputin. I sympathised with her most strongly when it came to Alexei's poor health as it was a terrible burden for any mother to bear.Laurence Olivier excels as Count Witte, the Cassandra of Russia whose consistently sensible advice is ignored by Nicholas and who, as in reality, warned that disaster would result from Russia's entry into World War I. I suppose that he was lucky that he did not live to see the Revolution. In his first major role, Tom Baker, cast at Olivier's suggestion, was perfect for the role of Rasputin, playing him with a wonderful sense of intensity. He comes across as a very dangerous, intelligent, manipulative and amoral man who was perhaps the worst possible choice for an adviser. The film has a very strong supporting cast overall: Timothy West, Ian Holm, John Wood, Roy Dotrice, Michael Redgrave (whose daughter Vanessa was considered for Alexandra), Julian Glover, Alan Webb and John McEnery as Alexander Kerensky, who died only a year and a half before the film was released. McEnery looks the image of him, incidentally.On the negative side, the film is too long at three hours and six minutes. It suffers from pacing problems for a full half four (from about 60 to 90 minutes into its long run). They could have probably cut at least half an hour of flab here and there without it making much difference. While the scenes in the first half featuring the Bolsheviks were necessary for later in the film, they weren't terribly good or interesting. The film hues fairly closely to history but takes a few liberties. For instance, Stalin and Lenin meet a few years too early and Stolypin is assassinated in 1913 rather than 1911. I thought that it was rather odd that, while several of the events surrounding the 1905 Revolution were depicted or discussed, there was no direct mention of the Revolution itself. The film jumps forward from 1905 to 1913 very suddenly and it was a bit distracting as, even given the film's length, it felt like it was leaving something out. The second half, beginning with the outbreak of World War I, is much stronger than the first and the film rollicks along at a great pace from then onwards. There is a great sense of foreboding in the second half as the story draws to its tragic conclusion. The film does a fantastic job of contrasting the opulence of the Winter Palace with both the poor living conditions of the Russian people and those of the Romanovs themselves after the Revolution.Overall, this is an excellent film which is neither as successful nor as well remembered as it deserves to be. Were it for its aforementioned problems, I would have certainly given it full marks.

clarne "Nicholas and Alexandra" is one of the last of the grand, sweeping epics that dominated the box office in the 50's and 60's. With the new wave of young, reckless directors who took to the scene in the 70's this kind of filmmaking seemed strangely dated. Ironically enough it kind of mimics the fate of the Romanov family, holding on to ideals that can no longer protect them. The genre, which had started with aplomb with movies like "Gone With The Wind" didn't draw the numbers it used to, and after seeing this movie I can't help but think of what a shame that is.The movie is off to a slow start, and doesn't really grab the viewer until after the introduction of Rasputin. From there on in it's pure cinematic joy to witness the fate of the Tzar and his family unravel. The actors do a tremendous job. It's obvious that the producers wanted their actors to look as much like their characters as possible, and while this doesn't necessarily strengthen the movie by itself it clearly gives it a stronger feel of authenticity. Furthermore they perfectly embody their flawed characters. The czar, beautifully played by Michael Jayston is a warm, caring man who unfortunately is totally unfit to be a czar. He is out of touch with his people, and feebly clings to his autocratic power. Jayston manages to portray an almost absurd certainty in his divine right, and ability to rule while at the same time exposing his uncertainty and fright. Janet Suzman is equally impressive as the loving, but domineering Alexandra.The look and feel of the movie is also fantastic. The jaw-dropping visuals of Russia perfectly accommodates the story, and the music is wonderful all the way through. The pace is slow, and it's easy to see why critics who had just witnessed the exhilarating pace of movies like "A Clockwork Orange" or "The French Connection". But this was how these kinds of movies were made, and "Nicholas and Alexandra" does not shame the genre. It's actually a beautiful end to a spectacular genre which is well worth a look for anyone with a soft spot for David Lean-like movies.