In re my bleg the other day about the 1991 movie The Inner Circle: Readers put me on to a website (and I believe there are others) that specializes in hard-to-get DVDs. They had the movie; I bought it; last night I watched it. The DVD quality is excellent.

And the movie’s even better than I remembered. The plush, hushed grandiosity of the Kremlin interiors is particularly impressive. Bob Hoskins is a superb Beria — even more flesh-creepingly sinister than the original, and that’s going some. Alexander Zbruyev’s Stalin is almost as good, which is easily good enough. (Though for me, Timothy West will always be the real Stalin — last picture on this page.) Lolita Davidovich is very lovely, a thing I don’t remember noticing in 1991, probably because I wasn’t long married. Tom Hulce, whom everyone remembers just as Mozart, fits his role perfectly.

Ivan: Who do you love better, me or Katya?
Anastasia: Who do you love better, me or Comrade Stalin?
Ivan: Comrade Stalin, of course.

One thing I did remember: That first orphanage scene is really hard to watch. It still is.