Events in Russia during and after World War One worried capitalist countries. Vladimir Lenin and his cohorts in 1917, aided by Germany, snuck into the country, taking advantage of a deteriorating government by overthrowing the Tsar and assuming the functions of Russia. With the war over, other European countries were looking at possible full-scale revolutions by Communist sympathizers who realized the current governments threw away lives needlessly and ruined their economies and personal savings.
A small Boston production company, Mayflower Photoplay, produced its first motion picture, a propaganda movie on the pitfalls of a collectivistic society, in the release of April 1919 "Bolshevism on Trial," aka "Shattered Dreams." The movie was based on Thomas Dixon's (yes, the same author who wrote "The Clansman" from which D. W. Griffith extrapolated his "Birth of a Nation") 1909 novel "Comrade: A Story of Social Adventure in California."
The script relocated the setting of the communist experiment from an island off San Francisco to one off Florida. "Bolshevism," filmed in Palm Beach, Florida, follows a group of passionate organizers and workers excited at the prospects of establishing and living in a highly-socialized community where everyone works hard earning the same wages as everyone else while everything is provided for them.
Needless to say, things go haywire as the workers rebel about the unfairness of their supervisors. They begin to see that its leader, Herman Wolff (played by Leslie Stowe) is nothing but a lecherous, greedy nobody who uses an appealing philosophy for his own personal gains.
A modern account of the 100-year-old film served as a warning to those more moderates in the Democratic Party when Bernie Sanders was gaining steam in the early 2020 party primaries, seeing the movie as possible fodder by the Republicans of what the country would look like under a Sanders' administration.
