The Doomed: Russian Soldiers in France

The Doomed: Russian Soldiers in France

1930. USSR. Directed by Lev Push. With N. Kolomenskii, Galina Egorova-Dolenko, Anton Martynov. Prison escapes, mutinies, a love affair, and vengeful plots fuel this entertaining silent epic, set amid Russian émigrés in Paris after the First World War. Director Lev Push teamed with noted Georgian artist Lado Gudiashvili, who had lived in Paris for several years, to painstakingly re-create the Paris of the era. Based on a real-life mutiny in the Russian expeditionary corps in France after the Russian Revolution, the film took a then-current worry of the government—that military-trained Russian émigrés in Europe could unite to take arms against the new Bolshevik government—and turned it into a fantasy of “patriotic” Russians actually banding together to help their new overlords. Silent, with Russian intertitles and simultaneous English translation. 70 min.