The other Catherine the Great movie

It's slightly odd, but there were two separate prestige biopics of Russian Empress Catherine the Great released in 1934. One was the Hollywood movie The Scarlet Empress, starring Marlene Dietrich and directed by Josef von Sternberg; it's probably the better-known of the two movies because of its Hollywood provenance and having a bigger star. A few months back, TCM ran the other movie, The Rise of Catherine the Great, which was made in the UK and is on DVD in a Criterion box set.

Elisabeth Bergner plays Catherine, born Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, a small principality in what is now eastern Germany. At the age of 16, she was married off to Peter (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), heir to the throne in Russia, which is being ruled by Peter's aunt Elizabeth (Flora Robson). The movie has them basically meeting on their wedding day, a sign that the marriage isn't going to be a happy one.

Indeed, Peter leaves Sophia, renamed Catherine because she needed to convert to Orthodoxy to marry Peter, on her wedding night, having an affair with another young woman. Catherine is understandably unhappy, deciding that she's going to retaliate by having a series of affairs and by taking an interest in the affairs of state. Catherine has a bit of an ally in Elizabeth, since they're both women, and Elizabeth understands what Catherine is going through.

Catherine is also the only one with real sympathy for Elizabeth. Peter doesn't like her and is biding his time waiting for her to die so that he can assume the throne. He's mentally unstable and, because of his relationship with his aunt, hates women, so he also plans to get Catherine out of the way once he's Emperor. (Producing an heir is not mentioned here; in real life she had two surviving sons before becoming Empress.)

Elizabeth is portrayed as having a bad heart in some very obvious foreshadowing that she's going to die, which happens right in the middle of a ball. This makes Peter the Emperor, and he's going to send Catherine to a nunnery. She realizes what the score is, so she conspires to have Peter removed with the help of an army regiment, which is what happened, putting Catherine on the throne, where she remained for over 30 years until her death.

Like all biopics, a fair amount of liberty is taken with the truth. I mentioned the two sons above. The movie compresses all of the action into two or maybe three years, when in fact Catherine was married to Peter for 17 years, and Peter reigned for about six months rather than the couple of days it's portrayed as here. These aren't serious problems with the movie, but history buffs as always will notice the liberties.

As compared to The Scarlet Empress, each of the films has its strengths. The Scarlet Empress has the better production values, and impressive camerawork from von Sternberg's ideas, making the movie visually very interesting. The Rise of Catherine the Great is generally more straightforward, although that also turns out to be the movie's strength. It's a much easier version of history to follow than the more visual and less narrative American film.

Some reviews I read have a problem with Bergner's acting, but I didn't. Fairbanks, and especially Robson, are quite good, the latter not a surprise at all. And the production values, while not quite as good as in The Scarlett Empress, aren't a problem at all either.

I can definitely recommend The Rise of Catherine the Great and, having now seen three of the four movies on the Eclipse series box set, the set itself.