“The Fall Of The Romanov Dynasty is a tribute to the creative art of editing. For its time, it was a daring innovation. The first historical documentary to be produced by the Soviet cinema, it marked the tenth anniversary of the February Revolution of 1917. Utilizing stock footage, Esfir Shub showed great skill in editing shots taken in different styles by different cameramen working at different times. She revivified shadows of the past to demonstrate that the downfall of the old world was inevitable. Her first three films, beginning with The Fall Of The Romanov Dynasty were a kind of film encyclopedia of the Russian revolution and the establishment of socialism in the Soviet Union.... More sensitively than Vertov and more carefully than any newsreel editor in the world, Esfir Shub examined the whole archive of preserved newsreels, frame by frame, finding the implications and connectives in each that only a skillful editor is trained to do.”