NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA is on TCM tonight. I have never seen this movie. Do the learned people here on HHW recommend that I watch it?
I cannot speak for the learned folks, of course, but I found "Nicholas and Alexandra" worthy of my attention in both the theater and on laserdisc. The theatrical version I saw was edited down from the initial roadshow offerings with several scenes cut, including one of Alexei rebuking Nicholas II for giving up his throne. I found these scenes restored on the laser. I have it on DVD, as well, but have not watched it.
It's a magnficiently produced epic with extraordinary attention to period detail. David Lean's preferred art director, John Box, and favorite cinematographer, Freddie Young, contributed superb work for this non-Lean film. The performance of Janet Suzman as Alexandra was justifiably nominated for the Best Actress Oscar. One of her strongest scenes has her returning to the palace only to find that most of the household guard, and staff, have deserted their posts. She then finds her husband in a room, sobbing. Suzman's performance peaks in theses moments as she makes a very unsympathetic, cold character seem human and vulnerable. The whole story, of course, is a downer, and there's no amount of zip or sparkle that could be added except to make all the pageantry as dazzling as possible (and that's what they accomplished). Michael Jayston is very good as Nicholas II, and Tom Baker is impressive as Rasputin. Capping all the splendors of Imperial Russia captured on the screen is Richard Rodney Bennett's amazing score. This is not his "usual" score, either, but it has a deep, aching melancholy about it that sits very well with me when I'm in the mood for it.
There are many affecting scenes in the film, including one that always moves me...when one of the red guards strikes Nicholas II, one of his aides has a great moment.
This film was Franklin J. Schaffner's next film after "Patton".
FWIW, here is part of what Roger Ebert wrote in his review:
If the movie isn't exactly stirring, however, it is undeniably interesting, especially after the intermission. There's a tendency to get confused early on, when grand dukes and dowager empresses and Rasputin and everybody crowd the screen. But at the end there is only an ordinary middle-aged man and his family, all very much bewildered and frightened, kidding themselves that they're not going to die. Two of the film's most intelligent performances come in here: those of a colonel assigned to guard the family and an old man picked by the revolution as their chief executioner.
All the performances are nicely keyed to an ensemble acting style that avoids the poses and flourishes of most epics. Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman, two experienced British actors who are movie unknowns, inhabit the title roles very naturally. And if it weren't for the way the Bolshevik revolution keeps interrupting things (like news bulletins), their story might have made a nice, muted domestic tragedy.
