Nicholas and Alexandra

Old-fashioned, overlong costume epic, comfortably reactionary in its view of the Tsar Nicholas as a saint who knew not what he was doing to the Russian people, and of the revolutionaries as potential tyrants reaching hungrily for power. The first part is elegant and surprisingly affecting in detailing the love story of Nicholas and Alexandra (beautifully played by Jayston and Suzman), blighted when their son turns out to be a haemophiliac and Rasputin (Baker) erupts into their lives. The revolutionaries get shorter shrift. Two comrades exchange recollections of Siberia before introducing themselves - 'Josef Stalin...''My name is Lenin' - with the name-dropping becoming decidedly Goonish when Lenin then turns to a bystander to cry, 'Trotsky, you've been avoiding me!' Much cameo role-playing around here; and in the last part of the film, devoted to the decline and fall of the Romanovs, they seem to take an unconscionable time a-dying.