Product Details

• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Nat'l Geographic Vid
• VHS Release Date: July 8, 1997
• Run Time: 65 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304475586
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,674 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

National Geographic has done its usual highly professional job with this visual account of Czar Nicholas II and his czarina, Alexandra. It features a good deal of interesting newsreel footage of the epoch and a lot of affecting snapshots of their family. Many of the candid snapshots were taken by the czar himself or his daughter, Anastasia. The narration, by the distinguished British actor Jeremy Irons, is quietly effective, although some viewers may find his consistently melancholy tone a bit too funereal. The story of the brutal murder of the imperial family by a Bolshevik firing squad in Ekaterinburg is appropriately shocking, even if no one coached Irons in an acceptable pronunciation of Ekaterinburg. Although the film devotes considerable attention to the controversial identification of the family's remains, it was made in 1995 so it naturally doesn't extend to their eventual burial back in St. Petersburg. More surprisingly, the film does not address the question of the bodies missing from the family burial site and, especially, the fate of Anastasia, which so aroused the public's interest for 70 years.

There are a few glimpses of Lenin rallying the masses against the ancient regime and some views of the Russian Army in disorderly retreat. However, in spite of some references to the czar's avoidance of his official duties, the focus is regularly on his role as a loving father and husband. Consequently, the presentation does not perhaps deal adequately with his responsibility for Russia's crushing defeat in World War I and the eventual fall of the Romanov dynasty. Nicholas and Alexandra, loving couple and devoted parents though they were, cannot escape the judgment of history. It seems clear that it was Nicholas's inept leadership and his reliance on his neurotic wife for support and counsel that led to the death of millions of Russian soldiers and thus to the revolutionary debacle. This wiped out the chance that Russia could capitalize on the economic progress it had made at the turn of the century to move forward toward prosperity and a more modern system of governance. Together, with a little help from their friends like Rasputin, they paved the way for Lenin and, eventually, Stalin. --Ed Killham

Product Description

ENTER THE WORLD OF THE DOOMED ROMANOVS. It is a fairy tale and a horror story all at once, and remembering it was all but forbidden...until now. The fabled Romanovs, led by handsome Nicholas II and the devout Empress Alexandra, ruled imperial Russia in high splendor, despite the disintegration of their divided, war-torn country. In 1918, the rise of communism violently collided with the rule of royalty when the tsar, his beloved wife, and their children were murdered and buried in a secret grave. In the new Soviet Union, history was rewritten and the gilded trappings of the Romanovs erased. Now National Geographic Video tells the magnificent, tragic story of the Romanovs, using newly discovered photographs and rare film footage long locked away in official archives. Joyful scenes of Grand Duchess Anastasia winking at the camera on the royal yacht and doomed heir Alexei twirling in the snowy palace garden are juxtaposed with chilling, once-secret footage of the family's bones being unearthed by Soviet authorities. The public majesty, private joys, and terrible fate of the Romanovs are highlighted in extraordinary interviews with those who never stopped searching for the true story of RUSSIA'S LAST TSAR.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Propaganda, March 17, 2001

By 

Alexis Williams "readeralexis" (Etna, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: National Geographic's Russia's Last Tsar [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"To the victor go the spoils," including the "right" to revise history. I was disheartened when I saw this film because the greater part of it is Bolshevik propaganda from the Revolution. Sure, there are facts, like dates, locations, little things like that. But instead of truly researching the person of Tsar Nicholas II, the Geographic people were content to simply regurgitate what the party-line of the Soviet Union had been in regards to the Tsar. Obviously this information is very biased. Unfortunately, since most information about the Tsar that we have today was written after the Revolution, either by the Soviets or by people who had the Soviets as their sole source of information, one really cannot find a non-biased source. There is, of course, the Russian Orthodox Church, but scholars seem to view them as being an even more biased source than the Soviets were. In any case, take the statements in this film with a BOULDER of salt.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Recycled Imagery; Biased Narration, December 7, 2002

By 

"kellybook" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: National Geographic's Russia's Last Tsar [VHS] (VHS Tape)

All - Nicholas II, entire family, Rasputin - are depicted in the same inaccurate, flat caricatures as those created by the Revolutionary propagandists. Anna Vyrubova is not discussed at all, nor does she appear in any of the photography. To give the crumb of credit where it is due, this film does contain bout 2 minutes worth of engaging footage of the Romanov children at play. Otherwise, it offers only still photographs most people interested in Russian history have seen before and often.

I give this documentary the following scores, on a 1-5 scale:

Objectivity: 1
Originality: 0

7 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Biography of the family, March 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: National Geographic's Russia's Last Tsar [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Tells mostly about the Czar and family what led to there exicution