Brilliant and touching

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

The intrigues of Imperial Russia provided a fertile source of melodrama for filmmakers during the 1920s, and at first glance this lavish French production would seem to present a familiar variation of a foolproof romantic formula. The far-fetched but enjoyable story introduces a handsome young General who falls in love with a beautiful gypsy girl being groomed in secret to assume the throne in place of a look-alike princess, who meanwhile refuses to abandon the holy anonymity of her convent hideaway...and so forth and so on. Sadly, the film itself has dated pretty severely after all these years, and the awkward 'sonorization' (the synchronized music and sound track added during the mad, post-'Jazz Singer' rush into talkie technology) only makes it appear even more stiff and static when seen today. Of academic interest only.