Silent movies - The Last Command

My choice of silent movies sometimes is quite random, but this one may have been the most random so far. I got here when I looked up something else on my favorite silent movie blog and got distracted by the link to a post about the myth that silent movie performers lost their job because of their voices when the talkies became big. In the post, William Powell was mentioned, so I looked up a silent film with him and ended up here, without a clue if that was a good idea or not. Let's see, shall we?

Public domain

The movie is "The Last Command" from 1928 by Josef von Sternberg. You probably won't remember, but I sure had my problems with the only other Sternberg movie I know so far, "The Scarlet Empress" about Catherine the Great.
This one is set in a time a little closer to ours, though. We jump between the beginning of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and in 1928 Hollywood.

The plot, as usual with spoilers.

Lev Andreyev, a Russian director in Hollywood, is going through a stack of photos of actors for his next movie. When he comes to the photo of Sergius Alexander, who claims to be the Czar's cousin and a former commanding general, he tells his assistant to cast the man and fit him into a general's uniform. You get the idea that these two men have a common history.
Alexander arrives for work. In makeup, the actor next to him complains about his shaking head and Alexander says it's the result of a great shock. His mind goes back to Imperial Russia in 1917.

Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, a general of the Russian Army, arrives for an inspection of the troops. He's told that the revolutionists have intercepted most of the supplies.
Two of those revolutionists watch Alexander from a window above, Lev Andreyev and Natalie Dobrova. "Let him strut a little longer! His days are numbered!" Lev tells Natalie.

Then they are called in for a passport examination the next day. Alexander questions them personally because he's taken with Natalie's looks. When he doubts Lev's courage, Lev talks back. Alexander hits him in the face with his whip and has him locked up. Natalie, however, gets invited to Headquarters because the general has clearly fallen for her.
Before a dinner, he even presents her with a pearl necklace while his officers eavesdrop at the door.

During dinner, Alexander gets a call. The Czar wants to visit the front and see an offensive, but the general declines sacrificing soldiers for the Czar's entertainment, much to the surprise of everyone at the table.
Meanwhile, we see a soldier in prison turn on the other soldiers and enabling Lev and the other prisoners to escape.

After dinner, Natalie invites the general to her room for coffee. She intends to shoot him, but she can't go through with it. When he asks why she didn't shoot him, she replies that she couldn't kill anyone who loves Russia as much as he does. Alexander declares her his prisoner of war ... and prisoner of love (I'll admit that I cringed reading that).

Next the general, his men, and Natalie board a train. They don't know that the engineers are Bolsheviks. They stop in the next town and the train is taken over.
Natalie turns against the general and demands that he should stoke the train to Petrograd where he will be hanged.

When there's a chance, though, she slips him the pearl necklace, so he will be able to leave the country, and when a revolutionary wakes up - there has been a lot of vodka -, she embraces him, so he won't see Alexander escaping. The man thinks she's telling him that she loves him, but her looks go to the general.
He smacks the fireman with the coal shovel and jumps off the train.
Before his eyes, the train derails on the bridge and falls into the icy river, taking his love with it. This was the great shock that caused his head shaking.

Back to Hollywood.
Lev is determined to have his revenge and humiliate Alexander. He gives him a whip and a coat that looks much like the one he wore years earlier and puts him in a trench setting.  Then he orders the crew to play the Russian National Anthem.
Beforehand, he has instructed an extra to yell at the general that the soldiers are sick of fighting.
"You have given your last command! A new day is here! Down with your Russia!"
In this moment, madness takes over. Alexander whips the extra and grabs the flag. His mind is showing him the memories of the revolutionaries.
"The command is forward - - to victory - Long live Russia!"
Then he grabs his chest and falls over.
Held by Lev, he asks "Have we won?" which Lev affirms before Alexander dies in his arms.

When Lev's assistant says he was a great actor, the director replies "He was more than a great actor - he was a great man."

Soooo. Was it a good idea to watch then film?
If I wanted to see mainly William Powell, not that much probably because he didn't have that many scenes.
Also I'm not a fan of movies with war and military content, but somehow I had expected a bit less 1917 and a bit more 1928. I was definitely wrong about that.

The plot was inspired by a real life story that director Ernst Lubitsch told a newspaper columnist. It was about a Russian general he knew who fled the revolution and opened a restaurant, but was forced then to work as an extra in Hollywood to survive.

The movie was very dramatic, not just because of the plot, but also because of Jannings. I had expected that from reading about him, but had only seen him in a comedy before.
At the time, he was said to be the best actor in the world and he got an Oscar for this movie (and another movie that is lost).
Although he was a bit much for me, it was still impressive how he portrayed the general before and after, and the ending was amazing.

Nevertheless, I had a problem with the love story. I don't want to sound superficial saying that I can't imagine a young woman like Natalie falling in love with an older man. What I can't really imagine, though, is just how quickly she fell for the enemy because he did one thing right by declining the Czar's request. In that moment everything else he had done was forgotten? Sorry, but I didn't really buy that. Also the general was fine with her contemplating assassination just a moment ago? He had seen the badly hidden pistol, how could he be so sure she wouldn't shoot him?
And not only did she love him, but she loved him so much that she risked her own life by helping him to escape? Cos, you know, I don't think her comrades would have taken it so lightly if they had found out. Luckily, though, they never got a chance to because they all drowned. Oh wait, that isn't any better. Maybe someone should have taken the engineer's vodka, so he wouldn't have fallen asleep.

Not saying the middle part was all bad, but it was still too much and too long for my liking. Everyone was very passionate, there was loud laughing, dramatic crying, a lot of yelling, and a lot of either broody or glaring looks.
I could have done with a little less of that and a little more background instead. How did Lev make it to the USA and land a job as a director (maybe connections as he had been a theater director in Russia?)? Had he left the country immediately after breaking free from prison? Why didn't it try to get back to the revolution? How did Alexander make it to the USA and how did he get to be a low-paid actor?

Oh, and why exactly did Lev call the general a great man at the end? What had he done that Lev suddenly forgave it all? Sorry, it didn't make sense to me. I'm fine with him not gloating over his death, I would understand a certain amount of pity over his downfall and end from someone who was luckier, but from "I need some kind of revenge" to "he was a great man"?

Part of the movie is a satire of Hollywood at the time, the crowds of actors waiting outside the gate for their chance, the way the outfits are handed out from piles of clothes, boots, rifles, but as mentioned it's a rather small part of it.
I'm not quite sure what the other part is. Are we supposed to be on the Czarist side? Times were not very nice under his rule either, if you didn't belong to the Russian aristocracy.
Or is it simply about Alexander as a man? A man we don't really know that much about, definitely not enough to call him a great one.

Again, was it a good idea to watch the movie?
Yes. I might not love it, but I also didn't hate it, and it was undoubtedly a experience worth making.


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Last Command (1928) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, July 28, 2015
2. Scott Nye: Scott Reviews Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command [Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray]. On: CriterionCast, August 12, 2016
3. Alistair Nunn: The Last Command (1928). On: Movie Musings, November 9, 2023