A slightly bizarre film about a quasi-Russian revolution with a deal of quick-moving action, unsubtle politics and revolutionary unpleasantness.
The opening snowy scenes set us off to a dramatic start. The impressive figure of Silatschoff (Valéry Inkijinoff) is revealed freezing in the snow, and is saved by Orloff (Albert Préjean), which turns out to be a wise move.
Meanwhile in a military fortress, villain Schalin (Raymond Rouleau) can't take no for an answer from the colonel's daughter Macha (Danielle Darrieux). He touches her inappropriately on a toboggan but she assertively crashes it and climbs back up the hill for a ride with the better-looking if pint-sized Orloff.
An insurrectionist who looks like Gollum is caught. But revolutionary proclamations, shootings, hangings and a lot of running around mean that this particular tsarist outpost is in trouble.
The other bandits, who also turn out to be ugly as pantomime pirates, pour petrol into the Volga, preventing Orloff from proposing to Macha.
The tsarist soldiers drag canons through the mud singing the Volga Boat Song but it does them no good.
As can be the way of these things the relationship between the revolutionary would-be tsar Silatschoff and his woman Olga (Nathalie Kovanko) is a lot more interesting than the toboggan-rooted one of woodenly honourable Orloff and Macha, who spends a lot of the time in a faint.
Still, the film is of interest as one of Darrieux's earliest, is given a bit more substance by Inkijinoff and Kovanko, and has clunky moments of atmosphere.
