Knight Without Armour

Jacques Feyder’s 1937 British film adapts James Hilton’s 1934 novel and was the most expensive production Alexander Korda had mounted to that point. A. J. Fothergill, an Englishman who speaks Russian, is sent under the name Peter Ouranoff to work his way into revolutionary circles; he plays the part so convincingly that he is taken for a revolutionary himself, exiled to Siberia and spends most of the war there. He is later assigned to escort the aristocrat Alexandra from Moscow to Petrograd to be tried for crimes against the proletariat, and tries instead to get her out of the country. Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat play them. Feyder also directed L’Atlantide.