- Story of the Siberian monk Gregory Rasputin and the hold he exerted over the court of the last Russian czar, Nicholas.
- In 1909, the peasant Rasputin is seen at a dance enjoying himself and urging his followers to do the same but another side of him will emerge when he travels to a convent, where the servant girl Groussina is howling with the signs of possession, he cures her and begins his reputation as a miracle worker. This reputation brings him into society where some shun him for his uncouth, bearded look but Ania the fiancee of Count Igor champions him and when she tells the Empress about him later at the palace, after the son of the Tsar hurts his leg in an accident, Rasputin is summoned ,away from his carousing with women, to the court. The miracle worker cures the little boy by using the gentle technique of bedtime stories and by touching the injured leg.He is brought in to talk to the Tsar. Meanwhile Igor who is suspicious of Rasputin gives a report documenting his failings and the Orthodox clergy who are also suspicious bring him into admonish him. Groussina has been urged by a fanatic, who thrusts a knife into a painting of Rasputin, to assassinate him, and lurks in the background as a newspaper from 1914 about the threat of war is brought to Rasputin who is once again surrounded by a bevy of women he flirts with.She injures him with a dagger . The Empress who it is mentioned is of German extraction is against the country getting into the war and Rasputin sends his own message to the Tsar counselling peace, but it arrives too late. It is now 1916 and Igor returns from his service at the front to find his fiancee with a group listening to Rasputin.Angry with her, he leaves. Rasputin is seen enjoying himself once again, partying while as one official says, others are dying at the front.The officer threatens Rasputin with a loaded gun which fails to work. A group of officers plots with Igor to kill Rasputin who they hear will be going by train along with Igor's fiancee to visit the Tsar on the battlefield. Igor pretends to be suddenly more friendly with Rasputin and invites him out to a dinner, where we see the food prepared being poisoned. Rasputin walks into the trap and ignores a phone call from the police warning him to stay at home.After eating and drinking some of the banquet he ominously predicts that after the coming winter the Romanoff family will come to an end.An impatient officer, seeing that the target is still alive,coming down from the stairs shoots him, a total of four times after which Rasputin still gets up, starts to sing, and walks out bleeding into the snow. The officer shoots him for the fifth and final time after which the plotters cut open a hole in the frozen river nearby and throw in the corpse. We see Rasputin's face in a superimposition repeating his prediction about the end of the Romanoffs. In a sled drawn by horses through the winter weather, the Tsar and his family venture off to an uncertain future as the snow falls around them.
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