r/romanovs

Here is something I have been thinking about for a while now. OTMA loved taking photos just as much as being in them. They had their own Brownie cameras and were always snapping candids of each other, their parents, random everyday moments around Tsarskoye Selo.

Got me wondering how they would react to modern photo tech. Say you handed them a choice, an instant Polaroid that is low resolution, but physical, something you can actually hold and pass around, or a hi res photo on a phone that you can zoom way into and study every detail, but it never becomes a real object in your hand. Which one do you think they would opt for?

Personally I believe, they would ask for a printer at some point, but this device itself would probably be another shock to them.

Though extremely disturbing, this movie is still worth watching. It features Malcolm McDowell as Yurovsky and the renowned Russian actor Oleg Yankovsky as Nicholas II. Remarkably, the production shot two versions simultaneously: one in Russian and another one in English and each got its own distinct soundtrack. What is also unusual is that Russian actors spoke themselves while shooting English version. Some scenes were shot in the historical places such as Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

This is how a movie director Karen Shakhanazrov recalls making "The Assassin of the Tsar" (Tsareubiytsa):

>I constantly get reminded how heavy this particular film was for me. Looking back, it might be the hardest picture I ever made. While we were shooting it, there was a moment when I genuinely thought I would never finish it. My late production director, who worked with me on several films, used to repeat an old Mosfilm saying, something like "once a film has started, like a war, nothing can stop it." I was raised in that tradition, so I kept going, but with this picture the thought that I simply would not finish it kept coming back to me. Everything seemed to work against us. Nothing held together, things kept falling apart, and it felt almost impossible to pull it all together. It was the early 1990s, a very difficult period economically, right before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Money essentially stopped functioning, chaos was beginning in the country, and it was hard to work on anything creative. All of this combined into what felt like an unbreakable wall in front of us.
On top of that, we were making two versions of the film, one in Russian and one in English, essentially two separate productions. We shot two or four takes of every scene, two in Russian and two in English, using a completely different negative for each. That was a condition of the contract. The two versions were almost identical, though small details differed, like the composer. The actors requested a different composer for each cut. Malcolm McDowell, for instance, preferred the Russian version because it felt less commercial, while the English version had a more American sounding score. Otherwise the films were basically the same, but making two versions doubled the work. Actors had to learn their lines in both languages. A Russian actor might learn English, play a scene in Russian, then do the same take again in English. It was an enormous amount of extra work, and I don't think I have made a film quite like that since, shot twice simultaneously in two language versions.
The origin of the project came from an article I read in the magazine Rodina, written by a journalist about the execution of the Romanov family. It revealed a great deal of new information at the time, and for me the story became one of the most dramatic events in human history, comparable to the story of Mary Stuart. Naturally, such a dramatic true story is deeply appealing to any artist, and it caught me the same way. At that time the subject still felt very new for Soviet cinema. Restrictions had mostly been lifted, but the subject itself remained fresh territory. I did not want to make a conventional historical costume drama; that kind of filmmaking scared me a little. I felt this story needed a different approach, and finding that approach was the hardest part of writing the script, which I worked on with my regular collaborator. Eventually we found our way in by shifting part of the story into the present day, using a somewhat mystical device that let the narrative move freely between past and present. That freedom in time and space solved many dramatic problems at once. It freed us from a conventional chronological retelling of the historical events and gave the story a different, more personal angle, something that genuinely interested me as a filmmaker.
People often ask where that particular idea came from. Strangely enough, I think it traces back to an earlier, unrelated project. Before this film, I had been developing an adaptation of Chekhov's "Ward No. 6" as an Italian coproduction, intended for Marcello Mastroianni, who was set to play the doctor. While preparing that project, we visited psychiatric hospitals, not only in Moscow but across central Russia, including Yaroslavl. It was an extraordinary, almost shocking world to discover firsthand. We needed that research because Chekhov's story takes place inside an asylum, where the doctor eventually becomes a patient himself. In our adaptation we planned to move the action into the present day. We spent about a month and a half writing that script with a wonderful screenwriter who had worked with Visconti. In the end, the project fell apart. My vision and the Italian producers' vision did not align, and we parted ways amicably. Through that experience I did get to know Mastroianni personally and spent time with him, an extraordinary man. Even though the "Ward No. 6" project failed, none of that work was wasted. Everything we gathered while researching that story, especially our understanding of the doctor character and that entire world, later fed directly into "The Regicide." I am convinced the narrative device we eventually used came from that earlier experience. Nothing in life is truly wasted; it tends to resurface later in unexpected ways.
The production of this film was strange from start to finish, including how McDowell became involved. When writing a script, you often imagine specific faces for the roles, even actors you know you will never actually cast, sometimes even actors who died decades earlier. While writing, we pictured Oleg Yankovsky for one role, and for another we imagined someone with a face like Malcolm McDowell's, simply because his expressive features had inspired the character. Later, once actual preproduction began, I had already found a strong Russian actor for the role that eventually became McDowell's, playing both a patient and a doctor figure. Then, unexpectedly, an old friend of mine, a businessman who wanted to try producing, got interested in the project. He had connections and pushed for McDowell to be involved. At first I said, without much conviction, that it seemed impossible, that an actor of that stature would be out of reach. But my friend pursued it anyway through McDowell's agents in London.
I flew to London for what I thought would be talks with McDowell, only to learn he was actually filming in Geneva. My friend arranged a visa and a ticket for me to fly there instead, telling me McDowell would meet me at five in the evening at his hotel, and that I would fly back to Moscow the next morning. I landed in Geneva, checked into an unusual old hotel, and felt like a character in a spy film. I had no way to contact him and no idea whether he would actually show up. At five o'clock I went down to the lobby, and there he was. My English at the time was not strong, and the script had not even been translated into English yet, so I described the story to him as best I could in my imperfect English. He listened and told me to send him the script once it was ready, and we parted ways. Two months later, he was already on set filming with us. He later told me that from that very first meeting in the hotel lobby, he had been certain he would take the role, something he only understood in hindsight. Looking back, I find that remarkable, since normally that kind of casting takes careful planning, not a single spontaneous conversation before the script even existed in English. McDowell worked for a much smaller fee than he normally commanded. He said he made his real income on other films, and that he simply loved the script and the role. He later called it one of his favorite performances, ranking it alongside films like "A Clockwork Orange." I take real pride in that, considering the caliber of his career.
I remember rehearsing one particular scene where he had to keep his back to the camera. Each time we rehearsed it, I noticed his face had drifted back toward the lens. After a few takes I finally pointed it out, joking that he kept forgetting his back was supposed to be to the camera. He laughed and admitted it, saying that as an actor he understood exactly where his strength lay, in his eyes, and that instinctively he always tried to keep his face toward the camera even when the scene did not call for it. We eventually got the shot right. It really was true that his eyes carried an extraordinary power, and as a skilled performer he knew exactly which part of his craft to lean on.
Filming itself was not especially long in terms of days, and as a director I generally prefer to work quickly rather than drag things out. The real challenge was that the story spanned four seasons, so we had to pause production and wait for winter, then continue, creating long gaps between shooting periods. That kind of stop and start schedule went against my nature; I tend to work impulsively and find long, drawn out productions difficult. It's part of why I have never made and would never make a television series; the idea of stretching a story across twenty episodes is simply foreign to me. Even so, this remained one of the most complicated productions I have been part of. There is a scene where the character Anastasia, in the courtyard, asks what town they are passing through, right before she is wounded and then killed with bayonets. For an audience, that moment lasts only a minute or two within a film of an hour and a half or two hours. For me, it represents at least a year or two of work, if things go well and the story cooperates.
I tend to measure my own life through my films rather than through years. This one happened while my daughter was born; another marks my son's birth; another marks a divorce. My life is organized around these projects rather than around calendar dates, and because of that I can't really rank one film's period above another, even the harder ones, because each represents a real piece of my life. I rarely go back and rewatch my own films. Occasionally one turns up on television and I catch part of it, but I generally avoid watching them again, because with any film, once it's finished, there's nothing left to change. Time passes, and you inevitably start thinking you could have done a scene differently. But at the same time, I've come to accept that you shouldn't tinker with it after the fact. The film should stay exactly as it was made.

While fanfiction is allowed, and it's alright to use some AI for what if pictures to accompany your fanfiction/alternative posts, or preferably for colourizing and lighting (and if you do these, please include the original photographs whenever possible as well), full cgpt prompts, however, especially if you use AI to create not only the image but the whole story as well, are strongly, strongly discouraged from being posted.

Please at the very least create your own scenario before using AI for something small to accompany it. If your entire fanfiction was generated by AI, this may not be the best place for it. And it may be deleted. Thank you for your understanding.

And a reminder that chatbot conversations with the "Romanovs" are never allowed on here.