JohnHowardReid Emil Jannings (General Dolgorucki), Evelyn Brent (Natascha Dobrowa), William Powell (Leo Andreiev), Nicholas Soussanin (adjutant), Michael Visaroff (Serge, the valet), Jack Raymond (assistant director), Viacheslav Savitsky (private), Fritz Feld (revolutionist), Harry Semels (soldier), Alexander Ikonnikov, Nicholas Kobyliansky (drill- masters), Shep Houghton (Russian youth).Director: JOSEF VON STERNBERG. Screenplay: John F. Goodrich. Based on an original story by Lajos Biro and Josef von Sternberg (which was in turn based on a suggestion by Ernst Lubitsch). Titles: Herman J. Mankiewicz. Photography: Bert Glennon. Film editor: William Shea. Art director: Hans Dreier. Make-up: Fred C. Ryle. Technical adviser: Nicholas Kobyliansky. Production supervisor: J. G. Bachmann. Associate producer: B. P. Schulberg.Copyright 21 January 1928 by Paramount Famous Lasky Corp. Presented by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky. New York opening at the Rialto, 22 January 1928. U.S. release: 21 January 1928. 9 reels. 8,154 feet. 90 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Former Russian general is reduced to working as an extra in Hollywood.NOTES: Academy Award, Best Actor, Emil Jannings (for this picture and The Way of All Flesh). Also nominated for Best Picture (Wings) and Original Story (Underworld).Number 3 in the Film Daily poll of U.S. film critics (after The Patriot and Sorrell and Son).COMMENT: One of the films that confirms Chaplin's observation that just as the Silent Cinema achieved maturity, it was thrown away. Von Sternberg's fluid direction is a joy to watch and his ironic story is concisely told with a minimum of sub-titles. Jannings deserved his Academy Award and is given excellent support, particularly by Brent and Visaroff.

milosprole9 Here's my little review: I still absolutely adore this movie! It has a story and yet one of the best ever, and an excellent performance by Emil Jannings (he won the first Academy Award for Best Actor). It has a very sad touching ending. An unforgettable brilliant classic! I'd give it a strong 10/10!

clanciai I had wanted to see this film for a number of decades before at last it became available on the web. At one time I had the opportunity to see it in a real cinema, but then something happened and the show was cancelled - so I had a special relationship with this film ever since the 70s, when I became a fan of the genius von Sternberg. His genius is particularly evident in this film, with its overwhelmingly human touch and story.Emil Jannings is cousin of the tzar and grand duke of Russia. As such he is acting as general in the war, when the revolution breaks out, and he is brutally humiliated and saves his life only by a weird coincidence, manages to get out of Russia and turns up in Hollywood as a pathetic and shaky old stand-in. A director (very convincingly played by William Powell, later 'The Thin Man') discovers him as the former general he is, the director himself having been a Russian revolutionary and humiliated by the general. He gives the former grand duke a chance to play the general once again in a film... It's the moment of reckoning.Jannings' performance is as always stunningly impressive, and here he gets the opportunity to play the whole range of his ability from a glorious but overbearing imperial grand duke to a horribly humiliated old wreck of what once was a man. The tremendous story adds to the pathos and dramatic power of the film, which mercilessly accelerates in interest and suspense all the way until the devastating finale...I have seen most of Josef von Sternberg's films, but I was never so impressed as by this one, although I had waited for it 40 years. So much is contained in it, the whole fate and tragedy of Russia impersonated in a looming giant of a figure describing a monumental fall from total glory to total disgrace, and yet, like in "The Last Laugh", he succeeds in performing the miracle of triumphing by his mere tragedy.The music adds to the greatness of this film as well, there is much Tchaikovsky, both the Slave March and the Pathetic symphony, but the rest of the music, which is the greater part, is equally apt. Those masters of music who chose and made the music for the silents were experts in their field and taste - I have never seen a silent with its original music which wasn't impressive.At the same time it's an ingenious movie about the movie industry and gives chilling associations to later double films like "Sunset Boulevard". It's like no other film, which adds to its timelessness.

howardeisman Sure the absence of spoken dialogue, flimsy sets and obvious miniatures mark this movie as an antique, but it does grab you. It is easy to disregard the antique technical aspects of the film, but the psychology of the protagonists are equally out of date. Did people in 1928 swallow the unlikely behavior of the protagonists as reflecting real life or did they see it as necessary plot components of a fantasy. I suspect the latter.William Powell was most naturalistic in his acting. He played a calculating, humorless, dictatorial movie director. The antithesis of Nick Charles. Jannings got a chance to strut his famous histrionics, and he puts on quite a show. Brent could be a smoldering Garbo one minute and a Joan Crawford flapper the next. Her behavior was designed for script purposes and did not simulate any fully fleshed out character.Director Joseph von Sternberg (nee Jonas Sternberg)and Jannings reached their career heights with The Blue Angel two years later. Von Sternberg could really stretch out a quiet, actionless scene and fill it with tension. He was successful in Hollywood for a while and then his career crashed. Jannings became a Nazi in Germany and slid into obscurity and early death after WWII.The movie can be gripping. It is well done, but the characters are acting out a movie style fantasy that is not longer palatable. I couldn't suspend my disbelief. Hey, times change.