Scarlet Dawn

"Scarlet Dawn" has an incomplete, unfinished feel. Perhaps it was filmed in haste and some scenes were botched and not redone. Who can tell? In any event, there is a touching performance by Nancy Carroll as a servant girl to a lusty young baron (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who carouses and womanizes (among his girlfriends is the elegant Lilyan Tashman, splendidly portraying a fellow corrupt aristocrat). Comes the 1917 revolution, the aristos must flee, and Carroll loyally accompanies Fairbanks rather than turn him in to the revolutionaries. After a cross-country escape (a sort of abbreviated version of Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat's trek several years later in "Knight Without Armour") they end up in Constantinople where he sinks from high cavalry officer to low dishwasher. The rest of the story will not be revealed here except to say that it seems strangely truncated.

The backstory unfolds with the liberal use of ultra-simplified newspaper headlines (""Czar Nicholas Denies Rumor of Revolution"; "Communists Stage Demonstration Despite Czar's Denial of Revolutionary Rumors. Thousands Gather to Parade Under Communist Banner"; "Communists Riot in Moscow"); the dramatized corollary to these headlines is a scene in which Fairbanks returns to his troop train after a 2-week leave; an anti-government soldier is hissing "no!" at fellow soldiers as their commander orders them to entrain for a return to the front. They refuse and fire on the officers.

Lastly, as in "Knight," the heroine's eye makeup and lipstick remain intact through the ordeal).