From Hollywood in 1928 back to Petrograd in 1917 and forward again, the fortunes of Emil Jannings' General Sergius Alexander encapsulate the ambivalence of Austrian-American Josef von Sternberg's silent masterpiece. Our protagonist seems heartless and complacent at the beginning of the central flashback, but loves his country; a smouldering-eyed revolutionary girl (Evelyn Brent), persuaded of his patriotism, seems ultimately happy to become his sex-slave; and her boyfriend (William Powell), head of the Kiev Imperial Theatre entertaining the troops as an actor, is later free as movie mogul to take his revenge on the old man, yet his motivations aren't ultimately clear.
Roles are exchanged; Russian officers light up umpteen cigarettes for the imperial diehard before his fall, while on-set flunkies do the same for the film director. Smoke gets in your eyes a lot given Sternberg's obsession with an obvious phallic symbol.
No-one gets off lightly: Nicholas II, the General's cousin, treats the army like his own personal toy and his representative seems heedless of human suffering, but then the new guard aren't flattered, either, quickly resorting to obscene mob violence. Hollywood is seen as a processing-machine for a surging crowd of down-at-heel desperados. And you have to keep reminding yourself that the Russian upheavals were still fresh in the minds and hearts of many American emigres when the film was released in 1928, which may be why the Petrograd scenes seem less stilted than in most subsequent movies on the theme (and there were clearly lots at the time, as the wry assistant director on the picture-house lot observes).
The structure, tragicomic parody framing a Russian melodrama, turns out to have been Sternberg's own; in a lively talk by critic Tony Rayns, we learn how the old director, showing the film to his students, use to shout out “he did nothing”, “he wasn’t even there” at the supposedly false credits. Tag Gallaher's "video essay" is an even better extra, a touch portentous but shrewd in its focus on Sternberg’s preoccupation with eye contact and character-dwarfing sets. Above all it's the magnificent camerawork on Jannings' malleable face which culminates in a finale of Lear-like intensity. Was this the greatest actor of his age? On this evidence as well as that of The Blue Angel, yes. Pity, then, that he went off to Germany and became such an enthusiastic Nazi.
- Available on Eureka Entertainment Dual Format (Blu-ray and DVD) edition
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