Mockery is a 1927 silent drama film directed by Benjamin Christensen and starring Lon Chaney.
The setting is somewhere in Siberia during the Russian Civil War. Chaney is Sergei, an ignorant peasant who, as the film opens, is scavenging the packs of dead soldiers for food. A woman named Tatiana, who was apparently traveling with those dead soldiers, emerges from the forest. Tatiana, who is dressed in peasant robes but looks a little too well-bred for those clothes, tells him that there will be a reward for him if he can get her to White-held Novokursk. They only make it as far as an isolated cabin before they are waylaid by Bolshevik bandits, and Sergei is being tortured for information about Tatiana when they are freed by a troop of White cavalry.
Sergei has taken a shine to Tatiana and hopes that they will remain friends. But Tatiana, who happens to be Countess Tatiana Alexandrovna, has fallen in love with Capt. Dimitri, the White cavalryman who rescued her. A humiliated, disappointed Sergei becomes susceptible to the propaganda whispers of the Bolsheviks.
Tropes:
- Arms Dealer: Tatiana becomes the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Gaidaroff. Vladimir Gaidaroff is a war profiteer who has grown rich selling weapons during the civil war.
- Call-Back: Capt. Dmitri and his men have shown up just in time to stop Sergei from raping Tatiana. As two men hold Sergei Dmitri asks if he went over to the Bolsheviks or he stayed loyal. Tatiana is about to speak when she sees the scars that he still bears from when the Bolshevik bandits whipped him. She lies and says that he was loyal and in fact that he stayed to protect her.
- Comforting Comforter: As they take refuge in the cabin, Dmitri lays out his coat for Tatiana to sleep on, and then he puts a blanket over her exposed feet.
- Death Glare: Lon Chaney was a master of Death Glares. He delivers a chilling one here when Dmitri sticks out his hand for a shake, after Sergei saw Dmitri kissing Tatiana.
- Dirty Communists: The Bolshevik raiders Sergei and Tatiana meet in the beginning are vicious brutes. The servants at the Gaidaroff mansion go communist seemingly because they're interested in gang raping Tatiana. By contrast Capt. Dimitri and the Whites are dashing and heroic.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Sergei starts off bravely protecting Tatiana, refusing to tell who she is even while he's being tortured. Later, after he grows bitter over Tatiana falling in love with someone else, he goes over to the Bolsheviks and tries to rape Tatiana. Then, after she shows him mercy, he saves her from being raped by Ivan, at the cost of his own life.
- Kubrick Stare: Sergei, when he finally catches Tatiana in an upper floor of the Gaidaroff mansion, before he starts chasing her through the building in hopes of raping her.
- Mutual Kill: Sergei strangles Ivan to death, but not before Ivan mortally wounds him. Sergei lives just long enough to see Dimitri come back and once again rescue Tatiana, then dies.
- Rich Bitch: Mrs. Gaidaroff is a caricature of an upper-class Rich Bitch, yelling at the servants, calling them stupid, sneering at the possibility of them revolting. She's a great Bolshevik recruiting poster.
- A Taste of the Lash: A Bolshevik raider whips Sergei, trying to get him to tell the truth about Tatiana. He doesn't crack, holding out until the White cavalry shows up and rescues them.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Ivan, who apparently works in the kitchens of the Gaidaroff mansion. He's a Bolshevik, and he whispers into
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Mr. and Mrs. Gaidaroff are last seen hurriedly exiting their mansion as Bolsheviks riot outside. Did they manage to escape? Were they lynched by the Reds? Who knows?
