Russian Title: Tsareubiitsa
Year: 1991
Produced by: Mosfilm / Spectator Entertainment International.
Director: Karen Shakhnazarov
Screenplay by: Alexander Borodyansky and Karen Shakhnazarov

Cast:

Synopsis:

"The film centers on Timofeyev (Malcolm McDowell), a schizophrenic confined to a Moscow hospital. He is convinced he is the reincarnation of Yakov Yurovsky, the man responsible for the deaths of the Tsar's entire family in 1918. Doctor Smirnov (Oleg Yankovsky) becomes more and more convinced that Timofeyev is possessed by the ghost of the assassin, ultimately joining minds with him to relive the past."

Misc. Info.: Premiered at Cannes in 1991.

Malcolm and Kelley McDowell attending the premiere.

Malcolm McDowell:

"Why they want a British actor to play the man who killed the Tsar I can't imagine - but the director and co-writer, Karen Shakhnazarov, told me that when he was scripting he had a picture of me on the wall. It is a brilliant script and I really wanted to go to Russia. It must be the most interesting place on the planet now."

- Sunday Express, 1990.

A Short Interview with director Karen Shakhnazarov:

Journalist: It seems you were making "Assassin of the Tsar" without any sympathy for communists.

Shakhnazarov: At that time we didn't know much about the death of the Tsar's family. When the nineties came, we began to get some information, and I was very excited about the idea of a movie. There are some very dramatic moments in world history, and it is one of them, the moment that will always agitate the artists' souls. But we were the first who've done something of it.

J: Was it difficult to work with the foreign star Malcolm McDowell?

S: It is always easy to work with great actors. Only the mediocrity is hard to deal with, they are pretentious, too self-absorbed and unskillful. And Malcolm McDowell is a great actor. We are still staying friends. I've recently been to London at the screen premiere of A Clockwork Orange, formerly forbidden in that country. McDowell has come to the premiere and we met each other. He said he still considered Assassin of the Tsar as one of his best work, though he has such a big list of magnificent works, take for example, Caligula!

J: Was it Caligula that inspired you to invite M. M. in your film?

S: Of course, I've known him and before Caligula. But you probably can call Caligula the trigger. Yes, it is pornography, but it is also the high art. By the way, McDowell himself told me that during the making of Caligula he had absolutely no idea about the special character of the film. All "dirty" scenes had been filmed without his participation; and when he finally saw the whole film it was a kind of a shock. Malcolm even tried to protest, but then he calmed down. This film was engraved in my memory. And when you are writing a script it is very important to be able to imagine some specific faces on the places of your main characters. And I saw nobody, but McDowell as Yurovsky. Of course, I even coudn't dream of him playing the leading role.

J: So how were you able to get him?

S: We had our English producer Ben Brams. He talked to Malcolm's agents, and at first our negotiations seemed not very enthusiastic. But then suddenly the meeting was appointed - like in old spy movies, I had to go from London to Geneva just for one day, book a room in one mysterious hotel and wait for McDowell in the hotel lobby at five o'clock sharp. It looked just like one of those secret spy rendezvous. I was terrified with the thought that he probably wouldn't come. But he came at five p.m. sharp, and we spent forty minutes talking. At the end of our conversation I was confident that he will be in my film. As we found out later, he'd had the same feeling. He agreed to work for a tiny fee - by his standards, of course.

- Thank you very much to Daria for translating and sending this interview!

Review by critic, Kim Newman:

Dr. Smirnov (Yankovsky), newly installed head of a Moscow psychiatric hospital, becomes intrigued by Timofeyev (McDowell), the institution's star nutcase, who suffers from the delusion that he is two different historical characters, the assassin of the Tsar Alexander II, who tossed a bomb in 1881, and Yurovsky, the Soviet official who presided over the murders of Alexander's grandson, Nicholas II, and the entire Russian Royal family, in 1918. Smirnov is perplexed by the patient's bizarre ability to manifest symptoms that appear to relate to the fates of the assassins. In order to understand Timofeyev's delusions and, with luck, effect a cure, Smirnov becomes submerged in the personality of Tsar Nicholas, and enters into a strange dialogue with Yurovsky, during which the story of the murder unfolds from the perspectives of both the doomed Royals and the revolutionaries. This international co-production benefits from the subtle and complex performance of McDowell in the multiple title roles. Less obviously showy but equally effective is Yankovsky, taking the twin roles of Tsar and doctor, and conveying the well-intentioned but essentially shallow thinking that leads one to death by assassination and the other to an equally grim, ironic fate. With a more accurate recreation of its historical core than has been seen on screen in Nicholas and Alexandra or the various Rasputin movies, this is both a compelling modern psychodrama and a powerful recreation of one of the pivotal events of modern history, addressing Russian history and the current turbulent state of the country in an effective and compelling manner.

- Thanks to Susan for the review.

Photos:

Candid photo of Yankovsy and McDowell sent in by Daria.

Availability: Available on video.

Four different video covers.
Cover 1: Philippines - Cover 2: U.K. - Cover 3: Canada - Cover 4: Russia, also sent in by Daria.

Film photos copyright ©1991 Spectator Entertainment International.