Tempest
Jan 23, 2012
(Sam Taylor, 1928, USA, 35mm, 102 min)
At the Paramount Theatre
Tempest is a feature silent film directed by Sam Taylor. V.I. Nemirovich-Dantchenko wrote the screenplay and William Cameron Menzies won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for his work in the film in 1929, the first year of the awards ceremony. The film is set during the final days of Czarist Russia and revolves around a peasant who rises through the ranks of the Russia army ending up a Lieutenant. The aristocrats and officers around him who are resentful of his progress make his life increasingly difficult. He then finds himself rejected by a princess he falls in love with and, having been caught in her room. Is put in prison. There he is stripped of his rank but soon after the Russian Civil War starts and as a result of the Red Terror the tables are turned. John Barrymore, the grandfather of Hollywood starlet, Drew Barrymore, stars in the film, along with Camilla Horn and Louis Wolheim.
William Cameron Menzies went on to work as an art director spanning for five decades. He earned acclaim for his work in silent films and later pioneered the use of color in film for dramatic effect.