Tempest

In the last days of tsarist Russia a soldier of peasant origin is raised to the rank of lieutenant. The other officers, aristocrats to a man, cannot stomach it and make his life difficult. The young man falls in love with a princess who rejects him; when he is caught in her room he is stripped of his rank and thrown into prison. Then the revolution comes and the table turns: this time it is the aristocrats who are locked up, and the woman’s life is in the former lieutenant’s hands. In Sam Taylor’s hundred and eleven minute American film, John Barrymore and Camilla Horn take the leads, with Louis Wolheim in the cast. Viktor Tourjansky worked on the direction first, then Lewis Milestone, and Taylor was left as the sole credited director. It was completed in 1928, and William Cameron Menzies was named best art director at the first Academy Awards for it.