Centering on aJewish community in early twentieth-century Vilna, His Excellency isbased on the life of Hirsh Lekert, shoemaker and activist member of theJewish Labor Bund. The struggles of a community torn between the threatof pogroms and the need for change asserted by the Jewish socialists areescalated by Lekert's shooting of the Vilna Governor General to avengethe flogging of workers who participated in a May Day rally. The filmcarefully builds a thesis based upon the class struggle within theJewish community: class divisions and loyalties supersede sharedreligious history and persecution (in a telling scene, religious Jewspray in the synagogue while working-class Jews are beaten by armedsoldiers). To bring home the point, Moscow Art Theater's Leonid Leonidovplays both the Governor General and the counterrevolutionary rabbi whosupports his policies. (Note:one reel remains lost.)