BRITISH AGENT (1934)

Leave it to Warner Bros. to parse & clarify the 1917 Russian Revolution in 80 minutes, and no stinting on the romance. The history, simplified, but not too shabby, far easier to follow than John Reed, your high school textbook or REDS, is based on the fictionalized memoirs of R. H. Bruce Lockhart (he’d later write the even wilder tru-adventures of REILLY: ACE OF SPIES). Leslie Howard plays him, dashing & gentlemanly as a young British Diplomat without formal credentials as Britain has yet to recognize any government in post-revolution Russia. He’s charged with keeping them in the World War, forcing Germany to maintain an Eastern Front. The film opens with the fast collapse of Kerensky’s moderate Socialists as an Embassy Ball swirls in a constant display of motion in the very impressive production: Anton Grot sets; Michael Curtiz direction. Now, with Lenin & the Bolsheviks in power, Howard’s efforts to hold Russian in the war coalition hang by a thread, a thread cut by his new lover Kay Francis. (Their diplomatic meet-cute is a classic.) She overhears his plans at a post-coital moment, and, romance or no, takes the secret info right back to her Bolshevik comrades who include Lenin & Irving Pichel as head of the secret police. It’s all frightfully easy to swallow, even when Leslie links in with counter-revolutionary ‘Whites;’ eventually wrapping on a romantic have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too finale brought about by none other than Lenin! With great supporting perfs (J. Carroll Naish an amazing Trotsky & a trio of stouthearted Western Diplomats stuck in Moscow (William Gargan, Phillip Reed & Cesar Romero). Does it have its ridiculous side? Sure. But the zippy mix of Statecraft, history, love & deceit (Francis never strays from her Bolshie beliefs) is tremendously effective. Screw those stiff docu-dramas; before picking up that assigned history chapter, set the political scene with this impossible affair of the heart.

DOUBLE-BILL: See how the end came for the Royal Romanovs in the much-maligned, but handsome & fascinating RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS/’32; with all those Barrymores (John, Lionel, Ethel) & real Moscow Art Player Richard Boleslawski directing. OR: Another side of the story from the same author, as mentioned above, in REILLY: ACE OF SPIES/’83.