AllMovie

The same year that the great European actor Harry Baur played mad Czar Paul I in Le Patriote, he also played another celebrated Russian looney in Rasputin (original title: La Tragedie Imperiale). Unlike most interpretations of the infamous peasant-monk, Baur's Rasputin is a multifaceted character, as much saint as sinner. He is shown to be sincere in his belief that his self-styled magic powers are best utilized in the service of Czar Nicholas and the Royal Family. Alas, Rasputin is also prone to a multitude of human frailties, notably the temptation to allow absolute power to corrupt him absolutely. Whatever one might think of the life of Rasputin, one cannot deny that he left that life in a grostequely spectacular fashion, which Baur and director Marcel L'Herbier recreate in all its vividly gory splendor. Rasputin was based on a novel by Alfred Neumann.