The Red Dance (also known as The Red Dancer of Moscow) is a 1928 American synchronized sound film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Dolores del Río and Charles Farrell that was inspired by the novel by Henry Leyford Gates. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-filmmovietone process.[3]
Plot
Tasia, a beautiful lower-class dancer from Russia, falls for the heir to the throne Prince, Grand Duke Eugene, but only admires him from a distance. At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the Duke falls in captivity and this allows Tasia to be near him.
The film featured a theme song entitled "Someday, Somewhere (We'll Meet Again)" which was composed by Erno Rapee and Lew Pollack.
Critical reception
del Rio and Farrell in a publicity image
"There is a good deal of lethargy about the opening chapters of this offering, but interest picks up in the latter passages", wrote Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times. "There are some good scenes in this somewhat wild piece of work, but it is often incoherent."[4]Variety singled out Ivan Linow's performance for praise and reported that the scenes of the uprising were successful, but "otherwise there wasn't much to direct in this story except to keep it going."[5] Oliver Claxton of The New Yorker panned the film, writing, "how anybody with the slightest modicum of intelligence could fashion such a tale is beyond me....a little criticism would shoot the film so full of holes that it would resemble a Swiss cheese without the cheese. The odor, I am afraid, would still remain."[6]
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