Michel Strogoff (1926)
Directed by Viktor Tourjansky

Film Review

Of the numerous screen adaptations of the works of Jules Verne few are as visually spectacular and memorable as Victor Tourjansky's silent epic Michel Strogoff. The novel had previously been adapted by Verne himself into a phenomenally successful stage play and two silent film versions were made in 1910 and 1914.  Running to almost three hours in length, Tourjansky's film was a bold testament to the ambition and confidence of French cinema at the height of its Golden Age in the 1920s, a lavish production that has all the drama, excitement and page-turning compulsion of Verne's classic novel.

Victor Tourjansky was a highly competent film director but he was never a great cineaste (of the standing of, say, Eisenstein or Pudovkin).   Whilst some of his films have stood the test of time, the vast majority have been forgotten, even ones that were extremely popular in their time.  Ukrainian by birth, Tourjansky left Russia on the eve of the revolution and continued his promising filmmaking career in France, concentrating mostly on big budget period productions. It was Tourjansky's Slavonic background that led him to be commissioned to work on Michel Strogoff, along with several of his countrymen, including some skilled technicians and Ivan Mozzhukhin, a star of pre-revolutionary Russian cinema.  The producers wanted a film with an authentic Russian feel and this is what Tourjansky delivered.  He was unable to shoot the exteriors on Russian soil, but the wide open spaces of Latvia were a more than adequate stand-in for the Siberian steppes.  The snow scenes were filmed in Norway.

In common with Verne's novel, the film suffers from a dearth of narrative logic and character depth but makes up for this with a seemingly relentless succession of action-oriented escapades that test the resilience of the titular hero and his playmate Nadia.  Most impressive are the magnificently staged battle scenes, which employed around four thousand soldiers in the Latvian army and are in a league of their own for a film of this era.  Some demonically inspired choreography, camera motion and editing work together to create a dizzying spectacle that is eerily reminiscent of Kurosawa's great Samurai films of the 1950s. 

The frenzied Tartar attack on Irkutsk at the film's climax is so fiercely alive and realistic that you almost expect the warrior-laden horses to burst from the screen.  Another highlight is Emir Feofar Khan's grand festival (which is hand-painted in colour on some prints), a spectacle of debauched gaiety that serves as a sickening counterpoint to Strogoff's personal torment as he is humiliated by his enemies.  One of the cinematographers who worked on the film was the legendary Léonce-Henri Burel, who also lent his talents to Gance's Napoléon (1927), a film on which Tourjansky was employed as an assistant.

At the time, there was probably no other actor on Earth better suited to play the doggedly heroic Michel Strogoff than Ivan Mozzhukhin (also credited as Mosjoukine).  One of the most prominent Russian actors in the pre-WWI, Tsarist era, Mozzhukhin went on to find great success in France in the 1920s.  He starred in several high profile films, including Marcel L'Herbier's Feu Mathias Pascal (1926), Alexandre Volkoff's Kean (1924) and Volkoff's Casanova (1927).  Mozzhukhin certainly had the physical presence that a part like Strogoff demands but he also had a formidable talent as an actor, expressing his character's inner feelings with immense force and poignancy.  Acho Chakatouny is just as attention-grabbing as the main villain of the piece, Ivan Ogareff, with Nathalie Kovanko (Tourjansky's wife) no less perfect for the role of Strogoff's love interest, Nadia.   Tourjansky was blessed with an impeccable cast and he more than got his money's worth on the acting front.  Watch Mozzhukhin's climactic fight to the death with Chakatouny and you'll see what acting commitment really looks like.

Predictably, the film has strong political overtones and almost reads as a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda, so intent is it on glorifying Imperial Russia.  Throughout, the Tsar is portrayed as a benign patrician, loved, even venerated, by his subjects, and it is easy to regard the treacherous Ogareff and his Tartar allies as Bolshevik rebels, intent only on destroying the unity of a great nation.  At the end of his career, Tourjansky directed a sequel, Le Triomphe de Michel Strogoff (1961), starring Curt Jurgens, which has a similar tendency to exalt the age of the Tsars.

After being a hit in Europe, Michel Strogoff was released in America, in a cut down form with one hour lobbed off its runtime.  For many years, the film was thought to have been lost, existing only in a three reel home video version.  In 1988, it was restored to its former glory by the Cinémathèque Français.  After this film, there have been many further adaptations of Verne's novel, the best known being another French version by Jacques de Baroncelli, Michel Strogoff (1936), which was re-cut for an American audience as The Soldier and the Lady (1937), with a dashing Anton Walbrook in the lead role.  Needless to say, none of these can hold a candle to Tourjansky's epic masterpiece, one of the most superb action films to come out of France in its glorious silent era.

Film Synopsis

As a revolt by the Tartars threatens to tear the Russian Empire in two, the soldier Michel Strogoff is sent to the Siberian town of Irkutsk with a vital message from the Tsar.  On the way, he befriends Nadia Fedor, a young woman who is travelling to Irkutsk to join her father, a political exile.  After a long and eventful journey, Strogoff finally falls into the hands of the traitor Ivan Ogareff, who has allied himself with the Tartar prince Feofar Khan.  In the midst of a lavish festival, the latter decrees that the imprisoned Strogoff be blinded in front of his aged mother...