Nicholas And Alexandra [HD]

Making History Live
One of the most beautifully crafted and moody epics to come out of Hollywood (or, to be accurate, Britain), "Nicholas and Alexandra" has never acquired the reputation it deserves. Released at a time when big budget spectaculars were considered passé, hostile contemporary reviews have shaped the film's reputation. While hardly perfect, the film nonetheless provides a reasonably accurate, if politically conservative overview of pre-revolutionary Russia and does an excellent job of individualizing the two monarchs.

The two central, completely convincing performances are by relative unknowns Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman. Several first-rate actors (Laurence Olivier, Eric Porter, Ian Holm, Alan Webb, Harry Andrews, Irene Worth, Jack Hawkins, Michael Redgrave, John McEnery, Curt Jurgens and others) support them in small parts and manage to make us forget their familiar presences to concentrate on their characters. The actors are cushioned by Yvonne Blake and Antonio...

History as Drama
The unadulturated history of the Russian monarchy has produced more compelling drama than anything Hollywood could produce in its wildest flights: Ivan the Terrible's descent into madness; Peter the Great's violent childhood and adult retributions (including the murder of his son) as the backdrop for supreme political accomplishments; Catherine the Great's seizure of a throne from a madman and her emergence as the dominant monarch of her age; Alexander I's possible complicity in the assasination of his father, his defeat of Napoleon, and likely faking of his death to live out his life as a religious hermit; Alexander II's death at the hands of terrorists. And the curtain drops on the Russian monarchy much as the play ran -- in pools of blood. The main difference in the Nicholas and Alexandra saga is that their predecessors created their own dramas, whereas Nicholas and Alexandra succumbed to the drama of events swirling around them.

This movie is inaccurate in many...

A spectacular yet flawed film
My beef about the film is that they took liberties in telling and condensing the story when it wasn't necessary. In Tobolsk the family lived in the Governor's Mansion - not a log cabin in the woods. Yekaterinburg looked like some Spanish town rather a city in the Urals. None of the movie was filmed in Russia or Finland (for obvious reasons). The execution involved eleven people - in the movie they cut down the number. Other scenes were outright inventions.

None of the church or religious scenes came off right. They seem more Catholic or Anglican than Orthodox.

Nicholas was taught English from the age of 8 by a Scottish teacher, Mr. Heath. He had an accent in English, but it wasn't identifiable as "Russian". They all would have sounded 'upper crust' so the accents were fine for me.

Suzmann and Jayston were superb. Suzmann was a little too glamorous and Hollywood looking for the role, but she pulled off the characterisation well.

I don't know if it's well...

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