Rasputin, the Black Monk

A hypnotic miasma of incense and candle-grease swirls through the corridors of the Winter Palace where Bertram Grassby’s Rasputin, half-charlatan, half-mystic, glides like a wraith in wolf-skin boots; his gaze, a cracked icon, bends grand-duchesses and generals alike. From the frost-lashed hinterlands of Tobolsk to the gilded boudoirs of Saint Petersburg, the film charts a vertiginous ascent: a barefoot pilgrim pockets apocalyptic visions, trades them for royal favor, and becomes the puppeteer of an empire convulsing on the brink. June Elvidge’s Tsarina kneels to kiss the grubby hem of salvation while Montagu Love’s Rasputin-haunted monk, eyes swimming with vodka and prophecy, orchestrates orgiastic rituals that smell of sulfur and lilacs. Courtiers sharpen jewel-handled daggers, the Duma roars like a wounded bear, and the camera—drunk on shadows—lingers on a blood-flecked icicle that could be the nation’s soul. When the velvet-masked assassins finally corner their prey in the cellar of Prince Yusupov’s moated palace, the film trades incense for cordite: cyanide cakes, brass knuckles, and a single bullet that seems to tear history itself. Yet even as Rasputin’s body sinks beneath the Neva’s ice, the reel keeps spinning, suggesting the monk’s true sorcery was to infect Russia with a fever that outlived his pulse.