Padenie dinastii Romanovykh

This insight into the events leading up to the 1917 revolution wasn't anywhere near as interesting as I thought it was going to be, largely perhaps because it was presumably made under the watchful eye of the Communist dictatorship meaning that what ended up on screen was always going to be one sided. Although it begins by showing the various elements of the Russian political, religious and societal landscape, the film does tend to focus more on the little man and the peasants and the impact the Great War had on the possibility for a revolution to take place. The old order are largely portrayed as malevolently grinning buffoons while the likes of Lenin are barely glimpsed at all. And while we see many shots of large crowds gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, we see no riots or bloodshed and, essentially, fail to really get a flavour of the times and of how much excitement must have been buzzing around the city streets in those heady days. Those poor mugs must really have believed the days of utopian bliss had arrived