Scarlet Dawn

Scarlet Dawn (1932)

** (out of 4)

Extremely light "B" movie from Warner about nobleman Nikita Krasnoff (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) who along with his servant (Nancy Carroll) is forced out of Russia. The two try to find a better life for themselves but each place they land just erupts in more violence as the revolution grows stronger by the day. Okay, Warner gave director Dieterle 57-minutes to tell an epic story about the Russian revolution so it should come as no surprise that the end result really isn't all that good. You really can't blame the filmmakers or the cast but what can you do with such a short time. Different characters keep coming up every few minutes and they'll make a brief appearance and then just disappear. We don't get to know that much about them and we really don't get to know why they're there to begin with or why they go away so fast. The movie features Fairbanks in a pretty good performance as he at least manages to put some fire in the character and make you feel like you're watching something real. Carroll doesn't have the same luck nor does Guy Kibbee in his supporting role. The sets aren't at all believable and not for a second did I ever believe I was in Russia or anything where a revolution was really going on.

A Russian baron evades the violent SCARLET DAWN of the Revolution by escaping Moscow with his faithful serving maid.

Here is an excellent little film, from Warner Bros. and director William Dieterle, full of excitement, drama and pre-Code libidinousness. The production values--sets, costumes, score--are all first rate and the acting is of a high quality. The picture's only major drawback is its too-brief conclusion, perhaps necessitated by its short overall running time of under an hour, but this does not explain why the film should be so unjustly obscure today. It is a small gem awaiting discovery by viewers appreciative of quality cinema.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr is properly dashing as the young nobleman whose life is suddenly tilted upside down by the political upheaval. The actor revels in giving a full-bodied portrayal, presenting a character both wantonly licentious and daringly brave. The sequence in which he dashes into the streets of Constantinople in search of Christian witnesses to his impromptu wedding is delightful in its unexpected sense of frolic & fun. Fairbanks is ably matched by Nancy Carroll, deftly underplaying her role as his adoring servant. The sweetness of her character's simple nature shines through, as well as a steely resolve, as she endures dangers and hardships to be with the man she loves.

Lovely Lilyan Tashman, in one of her final roles before her early death, plays the scheming Russian courtesan who hopes to use Fairbanks as her ticket to the good life in Paris. Guy Kibbee, a very popular character actor at Warner's, appears for only a few moments at the end of the movie as a wealthy American visiting the Levant.

Movie mavens will recognize Mischa Auer as a Russian cavalry officer; beefy Dewey Robinson as a Bolshevik thug; nervous Frank Reicher as a duplicitous pawnbroker; as well as Mae Busch & Lee Kohlmar as the wedding witnesses--all uncredited.

This is a typical Russian Revolution film, with all the chaos, the dreadful muddle, the constant introduction of new characters and their sudden disappearance, the reckless atrocities galore, the helpless people being most of them martyred and lost in anonymity in the whirling mass movements and the unfathomable pathos. Douglas Fairbanks Jr is a Russian aristocrat in the army who quickly has to change sides when the revolution comes and manages to escape all the way to Constantinople with a former servant girl, whom he marries, but other old female friends and mistresses turn up in Constantinople offering an alternative life, which he sacrifices for his love, and so on - there is no end to intrigues and adventures here, but they all crowd upon each other, leaving no space to breathe. The film is compressed into only 57 minutes while the original was twenty minutes longer, but it was still the pre-Code period, so those twenty minutes were probably cut away when the Code was established like a devastating censure for so many films. What strikes you here is the extremely competent direction by William Dieterle, the virtuoso acting by everyone (even Misha Auer turns up in a small part), the splendid camera work as early as 1932 and the impressing cinematography, accompanied by music that could fit Doctor Zhivago by Milan Roder, totally unknown and forgotten today. In brief, this is a gem of the early thirties not to be brushed aside but rather to be advanced and elevated in spite of its brevity to the rank of other classics of the same kind, like Sternberg's "The Last Command" and "Shanghai Express", Raoul Walsh's "The Yellow Ticket", Michael Curtiz' "British Agent", Jacques Feyder's "Knight Without Armour" and other heroic efforts to put the Russian revolution on screen, which all must be insufficient but which all at least give some impression of what that great human disaster for all civilization was all about.

This movie has lots of action and little heart. Let's forget for a minute that it gets just about every aspect of the Russian Revolution wrong - after all we only have only under an hour here to tell our story. In fact, the czar abdicated after World War I proved a disaster for the country, and a provisional government tried to rule as a pseudo-democracy until the Leninists took power nine months later, mainly because they promised to immediately withdraw Russia from the war. Now, back to our story.

Here we have the revolution being "rumored" in Russian newspapers in what appears to still be a functioning country until violence erupts suddenly and upends the life of nobleman Baron Nikita 'Nikki' Krasnoff (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). He flees his home with his former servant girl Tanyusha (Nancy Carroll) in tow, and they start to make a new life in Constantinople. Before the revolution the Baron made a regular habit out of making a play for the girl, not out of any real passion, but out of boredom as a diversion of sorts. The revolution doesn't change this, and he continues to try to take advantage of what is obviously a very simple girl. It certainly doesn't make the audience like this guy to see him toying with her so. Tanyusha follows the Baron because she literally has no place to go after the revolutionaries take over the Baron's home, and she has known no other life other than waiting on Nikki hand and foot. Once in Constantinople, Nikki quickly wearies of life as a penniless laborer, and that is when he meets up with his former lover, Russian aristocrat Vera Zimina, who has a plan for getting them to Paris where the Tsarists have congregated after the revolution. Unfortunately for Tanyusha, Vera's plan does not include her.

This film manages to completely waste the considerable acting talents of early talkie actress Nancy Carroll. She does a good job with what little she is given to do, but that is not much. Lilyan Tashman is the standout here, even though she has only a small role as Russian vamp Vera. Lilyan was so often given supporting roles just as she is here, but her earthy voice and glamorous looks make her the center of attention in every scene in which she appears. Guy Kibbee even shows up in a humorous bit as an American tourist who is curious about the Russian royalty that has been forcefully ejected from their homeland.

"Scarlet Dawn" has an incomplete, unfinished feel. Perhaps it was filmed in haste and some scenes were botched and not redone. Who can tell? In any event, there is a touching performance by Nancy Carroll as a servant girl to a lusty young baron (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who carouses and womanizes (among his girlfriends is the elegant Lilyan Tashman, splendidly portraying a fellow corrupt aristocrat). Comes the 1917 revolution, the aristos must flee, and Carroll loyally accompanies Fairbanks rather than turn him in to the revolutionaries. After a cross-country escape (a sort of abbreviated version of Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat's trek several years later in "Knight Without Armour") they end up in Constantinople where he sinks from high cavalry officer to low dishwasher. The rest of the story will not be revealed here except to say that it seems strangely truncated.

The backstory unfolds with the liberal use of ultra-simplified newspaper headlines (""Czar Nicholas Denies Rumor of Revolution"; "Communists Stage Demonstration Despite Czar's Denial of Revolutionary Rumors. Thousands Gather to Parade Under Communist Banner"; "Communists Riot in Moscow"); the dramatized corollary to these headlines is a scene in which Fairbanks returns to his troop train after a 2-week leave; an anti-government soldier is hissing "no!" at fellow soldiers as their commander orders them to entrain for a return to the front. They refuse and fire on the officers.

Lastly, as in "Knight," the heroine's eye makeup and lipstick remain intact through the ordeal).