Fall of the Romanovs (film) (Napoleon's World)

Fall of the Romanovs is a 1939 American film directed by John Hellund and produced and distributed by George K. Schwartz and Marty Manicoff of Pacific Print Studios, and based on the 1935 bestselling novel of the same name. The film was set in Imperial Russia between 1809 and 1813 and concerns the Romanov dynasty's eventual fall at the hands of Napoleon I and his armies during the 1813 French conquest of Russia, told exclusively from the Russian perspective. The film starred Richard Jeremies as Tsar Alexander, Olivia Lawrence as Tsarina Elizabeth Alexeievna, Clark Gable as Archduke Nikolai, Fred Simmons as Archduke Constantine, Vic Astell as Field Marshal Kutuzov, and Jennifer Melas as the scheming Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who opposed peace with Napoleon to the bitter end.

Fall of the Romanovs is considered a masterpiece of American cinema, was one of the first major studio films shot in color (Technicolor), and is regarded as one of the best and most popular movies of all time (often ranked as the best American film of all time), and an enduring symbol of Golden Age Hollywood. The film won 10 Academy Awards out of 11 nominations, was the highest-grossing film of the 1930's and, at the time, of all time (a record broken only six years later by The Great Pioneers). The film also cemented Pacific Print as one of Hollywood's heavyweight studios going into the 1940's, ushered along color film as a viable and economically feasible commercial tool, and set a new industry standard for films in the epic genre. For a long time, the film, which ran at 3 hours and 24 minutes with a ten minute intermission, was the longest American movie ever made.