User Reviews

The Art Director and Cinematographer are the heroes of this handsome melodrama, set in Russia during the 1917 revolution and told in the typically simplified vocabulary of silent Hollywood. The protagonist is a noble aristocrat, betrothed to a daughter of the Czar but in love with a beautiful commoner sworn the Bolshevik cause. Few couples ever had to face such adversity, and trial follows tribulation in a lively if overwrought fashion. Eisenstein it isn't, but was the October Uprising ever this fun?

I was fortunate to see this rarity on the big screen at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley back in early 1987, alongside the early Edison one-reeler 'The Land Beyond the Sunset' (1912).

I want to thank collector James King of Dunmore for giving me access to a print of 'The Red Dance'. This film's title refers to the frenzied rioting of the Russian peasants during the October Revolution. However, apparently producer William Fox did not want to risk misleading his audience altogether, so (to keep the title 'honest') we get a brief sequence of Dolores del Rio dancing in a cabaret. In a flashback sequence, we see her same character in childhood: beautiful child actress Muriel McCormac (unbilled) dances briefly but gracefully.

This film, like several other Hollywood productions of the late silent era -- 'Mockery', 'Tempest', 'The Last Command' -- is a soap-opera work of fiction against the background of the Soviet uprising. I was pleased that, for once, the Bolsheviks were NOT depicted sympathetically here. But other historic details are howlingly wrong. We meet a character called 'the Black Monk' who is clearly meant to be Rasputin, yet who is secretly agitating to overthrow the Czar. Sorry, comrade, but the real Rasputin was power-mad, and he insinuated himself into the Czar's household specifically to attain as much personal power as possible. Having got himself that sweet deal, he wasn't about to throw it away.

I'm a tremendous fan of Dolores del Rio, largely because of her almost supernatural beauty but also because of her acting (in sound films). Here, alas, her thespian technique embodies most of the clichés of BAD silent-film acting. When she speaks the word 'knowledge', she points to her forehead as if she were playing Charades! And, in this particular story, del Rio's preternaturally good looks might actually be a disadvantage. She's supposed to be one of Russia's peasants, not one of the aristocracy, yet she looks far too patrician. In some sequences, her mouth is lipsticked into a perfect cupid's bow even while she's meant to be starving. Worse luck, for most of this film, del Rio wears almost exactly the same hairstyle as Princess Leia from 'Star Wars'! More positively, I was impressed that the uncredited actress who plays del Rio's mother actually does resemble her.

Charles Farrell plays a Czarist cavalry officer who's also a grand duke, forced into a morganatic marriage to Princess Vervara (the beautiful ice-blonde Dorothy Revier). Farrell usually played clean-cut American youths. I found him plausible as an Italian in 'Street Angel', but here -- as a White Russian -- he's not remotely credible. Farrell's pretty-boy looks make him seem too delicate for the life of a cavalryman, even one who's a pampered aristocrat.

There's an excellent performance by Ivan Linow as a coarse peasant whose stock rises after the Revolution. Linow gave a few decent performances in early talkies, notably in 'Just Imagine' (as a gay Martian!) and in 'The Unholy Three', but he was hampered by his Latvian accent. Ironically, that accent would have been perfect for his character here in 'The Red Dance', a silent film.

Director Raoul Walsh shows little of his later skill here. Oddly, in several sequences of 'The Red Dance', Walsh seems to be trying for a circular motif: we see actors moving in a circle or a spiral, or action played against some circular object in the background. These recurring circles reminded me of the recurring X's (naughts and crosses?) in Howard Hawks's 'Scarface' ... or the recurring use of red in 'The Sixth Sense' ... but in those two films the recurring motifs had a narrative purpose, whereas Walsh's circles seem to be purely arbitrary. Was he perhaps making a visual pun on the word 'revolution'?

The peasant ghettos are clearly Hollywood sets. I was more impressed with the lavish wedding sequence, in which a Russian Orthodox cross throws a weirdly askew shadow while a Russian Orthodox bishop marries the duke to the princess. (He places the wedding rings on their RIGHT hands: can someone please tell me whether this detail is accurate?)

'The Red Dance' has many excellent points but is hardly a classic. I'll rate it 7 out of 10. Pass the borscht, tovarich.

When the name of Russia comes to aristocratic minds, we immediately think of caviar, vodka and the Bolshoi ballet. Commoners instead recall to mind a famous revolution that took place in that country nearly 100 years ago. However, both sides agree on the importance of Russia to the history of cinema.

"The Red Dance" (1928, directed by Herr Raoul Walsh) is set in Russia during its revolution and there are many historical characters and fictional ones mixed together, but this film has nothing in common with the masterpieces directed by genuine Russian masters; Rather "The Red Dance" is a kind of soap-opera with a mission simply to entertain people and Herr Walsh certainly succeeds "The Red Dance" sees the peculiar times of Russian revolution through Amerikan eyes, so consequently the picture is a harmless, naïf and overall, a fictional approximation of events. Herr Walsh hasn't any other intention in mind because he knows that propaganda films are exclusively for genuine Russians or collective academic workshops.

So, in the picture we have a replication of the Czar, another one of Herr Rasputin and a revolutionary one who looks like Herr Trotsky, besides a lot of Cossacks, Bolsheviks and even a Grand Duke ( Herr Charles Farrell ) and a commoner , Frau Tasia ( Frau Dolores del Río in her most Slavic role ). The latter two fall in love after some hardships and we learn that the big triumph of the Russian revolution is not the victory of the masses but that an aristocrat and commoner can find each other and happiness, MEIN GOTT!!.

"The Red Dance" comes off as something of a parody of Russian subjects with no serious artistic pretensions and full of delicious incongruities, a light hearted romance that uses the Russian uprising to create the sort of films that Amerikans do so well, reinterpreting history to make entertainment.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must dance the troika ( a Russian folk dance that recently has become very popular in Europe… ) with one of his rich and fat Teutonic heiresses.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com

1928 was a banner year for movies about the Russian Revolution. To their number you can add THE RED DANCE. It is not, alas, a particularly distinguished example of the genre.

Grand Duke Charles Farrell is an officer serving on the Front. He's frustrated because orders from the Court prevent him from winning battles. He's sent back to Petrograd to find out who's doing this. It takes him about 80 seconds to discover that Rasputin and the Tsarina are being paid by Germany to have Russia lose the war. Before Farrell can tell the Tsar, he's ordered to marry Princess Dorothy Revier and take over the district, including the prison where Dolores Del Rio's father is imprisoned, made to work the treadmill and beaten regularly for the crime of teaching peasants to read.

Miss Del Rio heads to the devastated farm she has been living on, where Ivan Linow starts to rape her. The family who lives on the farm come out to beat him with sticks. When he offers to buy her for a horse, they accept. So she goes on a walk, gets caught in the rain and winds up at a hunting where she makes love with Farrell, who seems to be an ardent democrat. The next day she heads home, but Linow got drunk and has thought better of marrying her. She enters to find her father's corpse and is easily persuaded to assassinate someone, who turns out to be Farrell, who has just married Dorothy. She shoots, misses, he helps her escape and they hope they will be together some day.

Then comes the Revolution and things get even stupider. Linow winds up second-in-command of Soviet Russia.

It was Raoul Walsh's last silent movie, so I suppose neither he nor the folks in charge of screenplays at Fox were concerned about what was essentially a programmer. That would be a major problem with the company until Zanuck took over. the visuals are fine, with a couple of fine montages and the acting is pretty good. But the way the characters are written! Farrell is a noble idiot, which has to be explained in the titles (he had an English mother) and Miss Del Rio gets along with her would-be rapist just fine.

Linow is the only character who makes sense in this movie. He grows somewhat, from drunken rapist to a man with a rough sense of duty and honor. So despite the beautiful visuals, I am just..... well, it's not a good movie. Story, Character and Visuals. A good movie has all three. This has one.