When Rasputin and the Empress came out in 1932, it garnered mixed reviews. The film generated considerable interest but didn’t really become popular with the critics or the fans. Despite having some high points, it turned out to be a rather ‘meh’ movie.
The movie was riddled with historical inaccuracies, but that wasn’t the reason why it didn’t do well. In fact, not too many people in the film business at the time cared how authentic or truthful real people were being portrayed in movies.
But someone cared. Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia, or Irina Yusupov, by her later name, sued Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), the studio that produced Rasputing and the Empress. Irina had been a Tsarist princess in Russia but was living in exile. She felt the movie wronged her and she started a legal battle — that she won.
MGM had to pay $125,000 (over two million dollars in today’s terms) to Felix Yusupov, and his wife, Irina. But tha wasn’t the end of it.
Felix Yusupov, Irina’s husband, was one of the people who poisoned Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin was a famous mystic and faith healer who wielded great influence over the Russian royal family during the reign of Nicholas II, the last Russian Emperor (Tasr). Yusupov sued MGM, claiming that Rasputin and the Empress falsely portrayed Irina as being seduced and violated by Rasputin, which tarnished her reputation.
The movie got a lot of things wrong
In the movie, the czarina (queen) of Russia brings in Rasputin to heal his elder son of hemophilia. The faith healer is successful in doing so, but he uses his mystic powers to take control of the prince’s mind and turns him into a slave.
While everybody trusts Rasputin, Prince Paul Chegodieff, a member of the royal family, soon realizes that Rasputin is trying to take over the empire. He told his wife Natasha about this and then began planning for Rasputin’s assassination.
However, Natasha respects and trusts Rasputin so she informs the mystic that her husband is planning to kill him. To gain more information, Rasputin hypnotizes Natasha, making her believe that she is no longer worthy of being a wife, and rapes her. This is where MGM took the kind of creative liberty it shouldn’t have.
In reality, Felix Yusupov (real-life Paul) did plan the assassination of Rasputin along with a few other royal relatives. He invited the mystic for dinner, made him eat a cake containing cyanide, and then shot him. Irina (real-life Natasha) never had any interaction with the Rasputin, in fact, they never met.
MGM knew it was doing shady things
During the making of the film, a member of MGM’s story research team also warned the studio that Irina’s portrayal in the film was highly inaccurate and could lead to legal issues. However, the makers had such confidence in the rape scene that they fired the researcher.
By the time the film was released, the Russian Revolution was already over and all members of the royal family had been executed, except for the lucky Felix Yusupov and her wife Irina whom the czarina had exiled for murdering Rasputin just before the revolution began.
The Yusupov couple were no longer the royal Russians. They were living an ordinary life in Paris when they heard about the film, and they were also in need of money. Soon, they realized what the filmmakers had done, and sued MGM claiming that the scenes between Rasputin and Natasha were defamatory to Irina and had no connection with what happened in reality.
The court eventually ruled in the couple’s favor, and as a result, MGM was forced to pay a large sum to Irina, withdraw the film from circulation for decades, and edit out the offending scenes.
The court also said one more thing which, for the movie industry, ended up being more impactful.
A legal battle that changed the film industry
One of the judges told MGM’s lawyers that if the studio had included a disclaimer at the beginning of the film stating that the characters were fictional and did not represent real people, it could have avoided such a heavy penalty. The makers of Rasputin and the Empress included the disclaimer in the edited version of the film.
However, this legal battle not only affected MGM but film studios not just in the US, but across the globe. Filmmakers realized that extra creative liberty may sometimes lead them into legal trouble, so they took the judge’s advice very seriously. Since then almost every film (except for biopics, and others that are “inspired by real events”) has included this disclaimer.
“This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, dead or alive, or other real-life entities, past or present, is purely coincidental.”
You can add this to the list of crazy things linked to Rasputin.
