This winter I am watching movies starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
This week I watched The Rise of Catherine The Great from 1934. The movie was also just called Catherine The Great at one point.
I watched it on YouTube and the reproduction of it wasn’t really very good at some points.
This movie, which takes place in 1745, was not a happy one for sure. I mean how could it be when it was about Catherine The Great Empress of all of Russia.
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was definitely not a nice man in this movie. He portrayed Peter III or Duke Peter, who Catherine the Great historically overthrew to become queen. This movie, like most history books, portrays Peter III as a bad guy, but in the 1990s questions about him really being that bad were raised, especially considering he attempted to make peace with many countries Russia was once at war with.
From what I have learned about royals over the years and during this marathon, many are degenerates who thrive on doing what they want no matter who it hurts, sleeping around, and having power, fame, and riches. This movie further sealed that opinion for me as I felt like I couldn’t sympathize with any of the characters.
They were all simply awful or broken people.
In this movie we are given the popular idea that Peter is the bad guy, and Catherine is the poor misunderstood young queen who feels she has to take over the kingdom after repeatedly being rejected by a mentally ill Peter. Peter has mistresses and loves to flaunt them in front of his wife and anyone else who will listen.
At the beginning of the movie we have a young German princess named Princess Sophie Auguste Frederika (portrayed by Elisabeth Bergner), arriving at the castle as the woman who will marry Grand Duke Peter, at the order of Peter’s aunt, Empress Elizabeth (Flora Robson).
The Grand Duke throws a fit about marrying her because he doesn’t want to be told what to do. The Empress wants him to marry her so the family line will continue since she didn’t have any children herself, or even a husband. Instead, she has many lovers.
Princess Frederika, soon to be Catherine (a name given to her by Empress Elizabeth who doesn’t like the name Frederika) is crushed by the Duke’s rejections and tries to flee the palace but gets lost and ends up telling who she thinks is a guard about her displeasure at being rejected by the Duke.
She says she has loved the Duke for years since she was told about him when she was a child. The man is, of course, actually the Duke and her saying she has loved him for years, even though they never met, impresses him and he decides to marry her.
Right before the wedding, though, a servant suggests that the future queen simply said she wanted to love him and not to have power over Russia, Peter’s heart hardens again, and he spends their wedding night with a mistress. What a catch. Har. Har.
Having mistresses and lovers one isn’t married to isn’t unusual in the family since his aunt has had many lovers over the years. In fact, when she demands Peter marry Catherine she says if he won’t marry and father an heir then she will have to have a child. He laughs and asks which lover she’s going to make “an honest man.”
This movie shows Catherine doing all she can possibly do to win the love of Peter, even pretending she has many lovers after they are married to attempt to make him jealous, but later telling him she really had none. He apologizes for all the lovers he’s had, they fall into each other’s arms, and the camera pans away to an empty bed being prepared by the footman.
Hubba. Hubba.
This is a movie where there are all kinds of innuendo and hints toward what people are doing in their bedrooms.
It’s like, “Tell me you’re talking about sex the whole time without telling me you’re talking about sex.”
At one point Peter asks Catherine what she and her lover did together and she says they went for walks and then curled up in front of a fire to read together.
“Then what?” Peter asks.
Catherine giggles and says, “Well, eventually one does get bored of reading.”
At this point she’s making it all up, but it infuriates Peter. It’s fine for him to have lovers, but not for his wife to have them and make him look less of a man, I guess.
The acting in this movie was really well done.
Flora Robson’s portrayal of the self-focused, master manipulator Empress Elizabeth was chilling and unnerving. I’m not sure how this queen really was in real life but how she is portrayed here is absolutely psychotic.
Bergner, as Catherine was the perfect mix of sweet, broken, and conniving. I was never sure what was real and what wasn’t about her.
Douglas pulled off his role as Peter brilliantly and I honestly think it was one of his better performances of the movies I watched so far.
This movie was banned in Germany when it was released because the director Paul Czinner and Bergner, who was also his wife, had Jewish backgrounds.
This ban prompted a discussion in the House of Parliament in Britain during which it was asked, “Is it to be understood that no British film in which there is a Jewish actor or actress will be permitted to be shown in Germany in future?”
I’m going to guess the answer to that was an emphatic yes.
Reminds me of things happening these days.
According to TCM, this movie was unfortunately released the same year a much more famous movie — Josef von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress — was released.
“Consequently, Catherine has become somewhat lost to film history,” the article on TCM.com states.
Marlene Deitrich was in The Scarlet Empress, a very dazzling movie, so her performance pushed Bergner’s out of the limelight, but article writer Jeremy Arnold says Bergner’s performance was still very good.
I think I may have to find this The Scarlet Empress and check it out to compare the two.’
The Rise of Catherine the Great was adapted from a 1912 play, The Czarina, by Lajos Biro and Melchior Lengyel.
Douglas was 24 and virtually unknown when he landed the part.
“Now I would have a chance to show Hollywood’s producers what I could do with a real character-lead,” he later said in an autobiography. “No longer would I have to play nice young light comedies or listen to offers to ape my father’s swashbuckling fantasies.”
Although he would try his hand at swashbuckling fantasies later as we saw with The Exile and Sinbad the Sailor.
Douglas almost didn’t get the part, though. He had double pneumonia and had been forced to drop out of another movie before being offered the part. He was determined to be in the movie, even though his doctor warned he could develop tuberculosis if he took the part instead of resting.
Arnold writes in his article: “Fairbanks later wrote that the real Peter III “was stubby with a puffy, pockmarked face” and “I looked nothing at all like [him]. I wanted to create a real character in the part, but [director Paul] Czinner and Korda insisted our story was essentially romantic.” Camera tests followed with Fairbanks donning a wig, satin suits and knee britches, and wearing white makeup, lipstick and even beauty marks. “Had I not been so in love with my part and delighted with my good fortune in landing it, I might have been more stubborn, but I was afraid I would be paid off and replaced…. When Korda saw the tests, he said I looked all right, though ‘far too young and pretty.'” Fairbanks grew a mustache to counter this effect. “The result,” he wrote, “was inauthentic but apparently satisfactory.’”
There was plenty of praise for Douglas’s performance too.
“His definition of the fuming Peter is one of the best he has ever done,” Variety wrote in their review. “His appearance does much to help the authors mold the character away from repugnant and to make Catherine’s devotion to him reasonable.”
This was an interesting bit of trivia from the TCM article: Sir Gerald du Maurier, father of novelist Daphne du Maurier and a giant on the British stage, had a small part in the movie.
Douglas was reportedly so thrilled to have a chance to work with du Maurier that when he found out that the man had only been given a small dressing room he removed his name tag off his door and switched it with du Maurier’s so he would have one of the larger rooms. Du Maurier never found out and he and Douglas remained good friends until the man passed.
Have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?
Next week I’ll be writing about my last Douglas movie for the winter as we move toward Spring: The Sun Never Sets. I have no idea what to expect from this one which I could only find on an obscure website.
