“All the disasters of the protagonist in Angoissante aventure derive from his incapacity to find money for the woman he loves and in the end causes to perish. But the classic situation of the ‘vamp’ who ruins the beloved is here parodied by the infantile nature of the protagonist. Every time they need money, Mosjoukine, like a little boy, asks for it from his father, seeking even to steal it from him. What he is able to earn for himself is only a miserable salary as an actor (two bank-notes of ten and five Francs). All the money his lover asks him for is used to keep up a film studio called ‘Societé des enfants abandonnés’.

Often the protagonists of these films are actors (Angoissante aventure, Le lion des Mogols). In these cases we have a double metaphoric description: the cinema talks about itself and about the habitual condition of the exiles. Silent cinema, that did not require the knowledge of a foreign language, was for many emigrants a chance for survival. The profession of film extra became classic for Russian emigrants. As the art director Georges Wakhevitch writes in his memoirs: ‘In those days the walk-on parts were in the most part played by Russians and the fallen nobility provided the best extras that have maybe ever existed. Above all in the ball scenes the grace and distinction of the dancers of waltzes have never had their equal, naturally!’.

Natalia Nussinova, Cinegrafie, n. 10, 1997