Huragan (1928) Review - A loud silent movie about horses and history

If you are looking for something to put on in the background while you fold laundry, Huragan is not it. This 1928 silent film demands you actually look at it because the screen is constantly filled with about a thousand things happening at once.

Is it worth watching today? Honestly, yeah, but only if you have a soft spot for historical epics where you can tell the horses are actually stressed out. If you hate reading title cards or can't stand the flickering of old film, you will probably hate this one within ten minutes.

It’s a movie about the Polish Legions fighting for Napoleon, but it feels less like a history lesson and more like a fever dream. The director, Józef Lejtes, clearly had a massive budget for extras because the battle scenes are absolutely huge.

I kept thinking about The Eternal Strife while watching this, mostly because of how both films try to handle these giant, heavy themes of destiny. But Huragan is much more grounded in the mud.

Aleksander Suchcicki has this face that was basically built for silent cinema. He doesn't just look at the camera; he stares right through it like he's trying to warn us about the next century. 🎬

There is this one scene where a messenger is riding through the woods and the camera just follows him at this breakneck speed. It’s shaky and blurry, and it feels more modern than a lot of movies made forty years later.

The costumes are a bit much sometimes. Everyone is wearing these giant hats that look like they’d fall off the second a breeze picked up. ⚔️

I noticed that Renati Renee spends a lot of time looking tragically into the distance. It’s a bit of a cliché, sure, but she does it better than most. Her eyes are so dark and expressive that you don't even really need the text to know she's worried about her soldier boy.

The movie gets a bit slow in the middle when they start talking about politics. I found myself wishing they’d just get back to the cannons and the charging cavalry.

There's a weirdly specific moment where a soldier is trying to fix his boot while everyone else is preparing for a charge. It’s such a small, human detail that feels like someone actually lived it.

I’ve seen The Law of the Mounted, which is fine, but it lacks the sheer scale that this Polish production managed to pull off in the late 20s. It's crazy what people could do with just a bunch of hand-cranked cameras and a few thousand volunteers.

One thing that bugged me was the lighting in the indoor scenes. It's very flat and makes everyone look like they’re wearing about three inches of white face powder. Which they probably were.

It reminds me a bit of the vibe in Via Wireless, where the technology of the time is trying so hard to keep up with the ambition of the story. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s just a blurry mess.

The pacing is definitely not what we’re used to now. Some shots of people just walking into rooms go on for about fifteen seconds too long. I think I counted four people entering a door one by one in one sequence.

But when the "Hurricane" of the title actually hits—metaphorically, I mean—the movie really flies. The editing gets choppy and fast, and you can almost feel the wind.

It’s a bit like The Life of Reilly in that it’s trying to capture a very specific cultural spirit, though obviously much more serious. It wants you to feel proud and sad all at the same time.

I did notice a few places where the film was clearly damaged or missing frames. It gives it this ghost-like quality that actually adds to the experience for me.

If you’re into the weird, silent stuff like Die badende Nymphe, this might feel a bit too straight-laced for you. It’s very much a "prestige" film of its era.

I liked the way the smoke from the cannons filled the screen until you couldn't see anything. It felt claustrophobic and real, not like the clean CGI smoke we get now.

The ending is... well, it’s a 1920s epic. It’s big and loud and a bit exhausting. I felt like I needed a nap after it was over.

Overall, it’s a fascinating relic. Not perfect, and definitely too long, but it has a heart that you can still feel beating through all the scratches on the film.