1929 · drama · silent
Fragment of an Empire
Directed by Fridrikh Ermler1h 50m1929
Director Frederick Ermler’s last silent feature and the last of four collaborations with actor Fiodor Nikitin. Nikitin plays an officer who spends a decade after the Great War as a shell-shocked amnesiac, until a glimpse of a woman through a train window sparks the return of his memory. He makes his way back to St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, a man out of time who struggles to make sense of the new society brought about by the revolution.
Our read: Fragment of an Empire (1929) reads as a sombre, steady, inventive drama · silent entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.
Sombre, steady, measured drama / silent, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured.
- sombre
- intense
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