The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927) by Esther Shub
Thursday, September 25, 1986, 8:00 pm
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
Written and edited by Esther Shub, 1927 U.S.S.R., 101 min.
Shub’s film was sponsored for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, and remains a premier example of the compilation film. Shub located newsreels of the pre-revolutionary period and, after a successful struggle to obtain production approval, uncovered home movies of Czar Nicholas II taken by the court cinematographer. By her positioning of regal celebrations, boating parties, croquet and tennis games adjacent to contemporary strikes, breadlines, arrests, munitions factories and war, Shub reaffirmed Kuleshov’s principle of imbuing each shot with new meaning by dialectical montage.